


Fitting Your Hand Into Mine

by paintedunlady



Series: Trans!Soo Soulmate AU [2]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic Character, Begging, Brief Dysphoria, Dirty Talk, Drunk Sex, Explicit Language, Fluff, Light Angst, Marijuana, Minor Character Death, Misgendering, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Nonbinary Character, Oral Sex, Pansexual Character, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Smut, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Strained parental relationships, Synesthesia, Trans Male Character, Use of Non-static Pronouns, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, description of major injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-27
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-08-18 04:45:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 38,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8149544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedunlady/pseuds/paintedunlady
Summary: This is the story of Kyungsoo and Chanyeol's life together, learning who they are and how they fit into the universe while searching for a soulmate who has been right in front of them the whole time(written as a prequel to Edges and i strongly recommend reading it first or at the very end)





	1. How Do You Know It's a Girl?

**Author's Note:**

> i'm still pretty nervous about posting this story, so i've decided to break it into parts and see how well the first part goes over... it's basically just the setup for the rest of the story and focuses more on the trans element than the rest of the story does since they're just kids and kyungsoo's still trying to figure it all out, but! there's plenty of chansoo fluffiness
> 
> also: chanyeol has [this type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical-gustatory_synesthesia) of synesthesia and a bit of ideasthesia, so basically he tastes sound and the concept of some things (like math)

It was only his sixth birthday and Kyungsoo already knew that something wasn’t right; all the tiaras and bobby pins trying to keep his bangs in place pinched his scalp, the mascara his mother had brushed on his already dark lashes made his eyes itch, the sparkly lip-gloss she globbed onto his mouth was too sticky for him to enjoy his cake, and the pretty pink princess dress she shoved him into that morning made him want to crawl halfway out of his skin. Everything was just _wrong_. His only solace in the sea of six year old girls was the neighbor boy from down the street that his mother had invited merely on principle, and even he was smashing his face into pink and purple frosting roses out of sheer boredom (or stupidity- Kyungsoo hadn’t known the other boy for very long, but he wasn’t entirely sure he was exactly the smartest kid in the neighborhood.) Despite the ridiculousness of the action, Kyungsoo longed for the freedom to get cake all down the front of his shirt and have it waved off with a simple “boys will be boys” instead of his parents fretting over how he completely ruined his pretty new dress every time he so much as gets a speck of dust on it.

Boys may very well be boys, but why can’t girls be boys too?

\--

It’s a few weeks after Kyungsoo’s birthday party that the neighbor boy shows up again, this time with some kind of floppy weasel clutched in his pudgy hands.

“Her name is Baekjin and she’s my best friend!” he declares proudly as he shoves the poor thing in Kyungsoo’s face. His wide grin shows off a large gap where his front teeth had been just last week and eyes shine brighter than the sun.

Kyungsoo just glares and wrinkles his nose at the smelly animal before taking several steps back. “How do you know it’s a girl?” he asks bitterly, his glare only letting up when Chanyeol pulls the thing back to cuddle against his chest.

“Because the pet store ahjusshi said so,” he answers matter-of-factly. The ferret desperately tries to wriggle from his arms, but it gets caught up in the little red leash clipped around its neck and twitches in place. It remains persistent though, and Kyungsoo is rather sympathetic.

“Did he ever ask if it was a girl?” Kyungsoo questions, and Chanyeol pauses, mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water until he presses his lips into a thin line.

“Hmmm. I don’t know,” he admits before lifting the poor animal in front of his face and staring deep into its tiny black eyes. “Baekjin, are you a girl?” he asks the creature very seriously. It’s stupid to ask an animal such things, Kyungsoo knows, but he can’t help the way he waits with bated breath for Chanyeol to get an answer.

He doesn’t have to wait for long; only seconds after the question is out of the older boy’s mouth, the ferret wriggles frantically and tries to gnaw at Chanyeol’s fingers. “Oh.” The older boy blinks at the squirming line of fur in his hands and hums, bringing it back up to his face for inspection. “I guess you’re not a girl then,” he says. “Should I call you Baekhyun from now on?” he asks, and to Kyungsoo’s surprise, the animal stops its struggling and squeaks softly.

Something stirs in Kyungsoo’s chest at Chanyeol’s smile, but he says nothing as the latter squishes the ferret back into his chest and it resumes its squirming. “I guess the pet store ahjusshi just doesn’t speak ferret as good as I do,” the boy says triumphantly, and this time Kyungsoo allows himself to grin back.

\--

When Kyungsoo’s parents first explain what the red writing on people’s wrists are for, Kyungsoo’s mind and stomach twist into painful knots.

“One day you’ll find someone with Do Kyunghee written on their wrist, and you’ll never want to be with anyone else,” his father explains with a smile. Kyungsoo is only eight when they formally show him the names on their own skin, but he already knows that seeing Kyunghee scrawled across someone’s wrist wouldn’t be right; it wouldn’t be _him_. He doesn’t know what it _should_ be, though, until he goes to Chanyeol’s house the next day. He checks the other boy’s wrist with fervor as they try to keep Baekhyun from chewing through the sofa for the fourth time that week, but as expected, Baekhyun manages to do it anyway and the older boy’s wrist is bare.

“I’m pretty sure Baekhyun is my soulmate,” Chanyeol says as he pulls the little weasel-like creature away from the fraying ends of the armrest and pats it gently on the head. “They just can’t put animals’ names on humans because it wouldn’t be fair, so mine’s never going to show up.”

Even at eight years old, Kyungsoo is well aware of how ridiculous that sounds. He tries to flatten Chanyeol with a look, but only succeeds in making Baekhyun squeak back at him in protest. He has to admit that the thing’s beady little eyes _are_ kind of adorable, but Chanyeol is probably pushing it with this one. “I don’t think it works that way,” he says after Baekhyun is already back hopping around on the floor between them, squeaking happily when Chanyeol shakes a toy and darts it across the animal’s path. He thinks about how just two years ago its name was Baekjin and how easy it was for Chanyeol to just… change it. He thinks about how, even though it may very well be a product of his own imagination, Baekhyun had seemed so much happier since the change- how Chanyeol never questioned it or called his pet Baekjin ever again. Kyungsoo thinks about a lot of things before he opens his mouth again and tells his best friend what had been eating a hole through his brain since his conversation with his parents. “I don’t think I want Kyunghee to be on my soulmate’s wrist,” he finally confesses. “It just… doesn’t feel right.”

The older boy doesn’t miss a beat dragging the toy around- doesn’t even look up. “Okay,” he says. “What do you want it to be then?”

Baekhyun pounces at the little toy, and Chanyeol jerks it away just in time. “I… don’t know…” Kyungsoo admits, fingers absentmindedly working at the loose seams of the armrest as he avoids looking at the other. A knot slowly twists its way into his chest at the confession, but he knows he has to say it- has to tell _somebody_ \- and Chanyeol is the only person he thinks he can. “I just don’t think I want it to be Kyunghee…” he says softly. “It’s too… um… girly.”

Chanyeol looks up when Baekhyun finally succeeds in catching the toy and gnaws his little teeth into the fabric, occasionally letting out little squeaks of frustration when his mouth slips too much or catches on a plastic bead. Chanyeol just pats his pet on the head with one hand and pushes up his glasses with the other. “What about just Kyung?” he offers. “That’s not too anything right? And you can pick whatever second syllable you want when you feel like it.”

Kyung.

The knot in Kyungsoo’s chest loosens a bit as he rolls the name around on his tongue and a smile makes its way onto his heart-shaped lips. Kyung. “I think I’d like that,” he says, and that’s that.

 

Chanyeol never calls him Kyunghee again, always just “Kyung” for the next several years. Luckily their parents never say anything about it to him and just let them be. If anything, they think “it’s cute that he’s come up with a nickname for her” and “Kyunghee doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe they’ll even end up soulmates!” Kyungsoo gags at the idea of the hyperactive boy that’s getting too tall to function and always smells vaguely of ferret being his soulmate, but he can’t deny the appeal of being best friends for life. He almost wants to tell them as much until both of Chanyeol’s parents start calling him “Kyung” on a regular basis too. The change doesn’t make sense to him at first, but soon he starts noticing that Chanyeol stubbornly corrects anyone who calls him Kyunghee and make scary faces at anyone who refers to him as Kyunghee at school in the childish way only eight year old boys can still get away with. Even Kyungsoo’s parents take the correction with a fond smile at the older boy, but with them, the name never sticks.

\--

Only a few weeks before Chanyeol turns eleven, they’re sitting on Chanyeol’s living room floor again when Kyungsoo wiggles a toy just slightly out of Baekhyun’s reach and whispers that he thinks his name is Kyungsoo. His name _is_ Kyungsoo.

Chanyeol smiles widely at him and says that he likes it- it tastes like radishes. Kyungsoo grimaces at the comparison and whines at the older boy not to ruin his name, but somewhere in the back of his mind he remembers that radishes are Chanyeol’s favorite food and the comparison suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.

They have to be careful though; somewhere along the line, his mother’s tone had gotten sharp every time someone other than Chanyeol referred to her daughter as “Kyung” instead of Kyunghee, and her delicate fingers would clench into tight fists whenever Kyungsoo responded to it in turn.

It’ll only get worse when Kyungsoo starts using his real name with his mother and everyone else- they’re old enough to know that now- so they tread lightly at first. Only close friends at school are told the change, and after the initial confusion, it becomes the norm just as “Kyung” had. Even the reading teacher Kyungsoo has always liked lets him write “Kyungsoo” on his homework from time to time, and she always drops not-so-subtle hints when it’s an assignment that their parents are likely to see. His other teachers and his parents, however, are not quite so accepting.

Points are taken off of his scantrons for incorrect bubbling of his name when he slips up on a math test- Kyungsoo had been drunk on the feeling of a good day and the equations coming to him so naturally that he forgot himself. His teacher had refused to acknowledge him as “Kyungsoo” without a legal change (“Kyung” was apparently already enough of a stretch, so long as it wasn’t on his exams) and after all the trouble, Kyungsoo never forgets again. Only the faceless computers at his university know him as Do Kyunghee in college, but to every person- every living, breathing person- he is Do Kyungsoo.

He just prays that his mother never visits.

\--

At thirteen Kyungsoo’s breasts start growing in and they just won’t _stop_. Every day his chest gets heavier and heavier as the lumps of flesh stick out more and more until he finally can’t stand to look at himself in the mirror. In a fit of rage, he uses all the expensive makeup his mother bought him to paint layers of black and red goop across the glass until nothing is left looking back at him.

It does nothing to save him from seeing himself in the shower though - even when he closes his eyes.

His mother buys him frilly bras and panties to match, telling him “you’re blossoming into a beautiful young woman Kyunghee, you shouldn’t hide yourself in baggy clothes like that!” as she shoves a fitted shirt into his hands and kicks him into a dressing room. He never tries them on. He never even has the strength to take off his loose-fitting t-shirt.

Instead, he walks back out of the dressing room a few minutes later with lacy straps still twisted around the hanger in intricate loops he could never replicate and the shirt balled up in his trembling fists. He merely nods when his mother asks if they fit okay with a hopeful slant to her brows and nods again when she asks to makes sure the bra didn’t show through too much. Kyungsoo doesn’t know- doesn’t care. He’s not going to be wearing them anyway.

He shows up at Chanyeol’s door later that night with his fists still clenched and a seething anger that doesn’t fully dissolve until he slips into one of Chanyeol’s old band t-shirts and a pair of boxer shorts. The shirt pulls a little tighter around his chest than it used to, but Chanyeol’s broadening shoulders compensate at least a little bit when he goes to buy more. Chanyeol says it’s annoying because he can’t move his arms in any of his dress shirts anymore, but Kyungsoo promptly shoots back that he would take the wider shoulders over breasts any day.

He leaves with the very same shirt and an invite to go shopping with Chanyeol and his mother the next day on the premise of “Kyung has such good taste in this kind of stuff, Umma please?” and smiles the whole way home.

 

The shopping trip goes better than any Kyungsoo has ever been on with his own mother, and he’s pretty certain that it’s not just because Chanyeol is with him the whole time. Chanyeol’s mother doesn’t pressure him to buy anything and quickly drops suggesting anything from the girls’ section after Kyungsoo turns her down for the second time with a shy “I just want to help Chanyeol pick stuff out.” His own mother had never been that easy.

The three of them had wandered through the aisles filled with t-shirts and cargo shorts for hours, Chanyeol always showing Kyungsoo his selections and waiting for the younger boy’s approval before tossing it into the cart and skipping on to the next rack. He barely looks at the items Kyungsoo timidly picks out before approving them, and if his mother ever notices that her beanpole of a son picks up the “short” sized pants occasionally, she doesn’t say a word about it.

\--

Things go on and things change, but Kyungsoo’s body continues to rebel against everything he’s ever wanted.

The first time he gets his period he cries for days on end, and even Chanyeol is helpless to console him. His mother tells him that everything is okay, that this is his first step to becoming a woman, and Kyungsoo fights the urge to scream at her that that’s not what he wants to be at all.

 

He deals with it for years, bleeding and hating and fighting every month until he overhears some of the girls in his class talking about tiny white pills that could stop it all- at least for a few months at a time. He sifts through hundreds of websites and compiles a tiny stack of notes before even thinking about approaching his parents with the idea of birth control, but as soon as he does, he knows it was a mistake.

His mother’s eyes widen in horror at her fourteen-year-old daughter asking for birth control pills with a stack of paper in her hands and demands to know the boy’s name.

_“But Umma there is no-”_

_“Don’t you dare lie to me! You tell me the name of the boy who is taking advantage of my daughter right now!”_

It’s a while before he calms her down enough to get two words in and explain that he just doesn’t want his insides ripping themselves apart every month, but she doesn’t budge.

“Absolutely not. It’s a normal part of being a young woman and there’s nothing wrong with having it. I don’t want to hear another word about this,” is all she says before going back to scrubbing the dishes so hard her knuckles turn white. His father, watching it all from the kitchen table, says nothing.

Even though his parents may have been done with it, to Kyungsoo it’s far from over. He drops subtle hints for the next few weeks, sliding facts and statistics into carefully chosen conversations when his mother is in particularly good moods, but the mood sours as soon as he opens his mouth about it. Like so many other things in his life, he eventually stops trying.

\--

Things still go on and some things don’t change, but after that day Kyungsoo realizes that if he wants things to change, he'll have to take it into his own hands. He scours the internet for ways to keep as under his parents’ radar as much as he can and learns how to do as much as possible without them.

He buys all his clothes when his parents aren’t around and cuts his own hair short in the bathroom mirror, the edges uneven at first as he hacks away at the strands, more and more black chunks falling into the sink as adrenaline pounds through his veins. It looks… slightly less than terrible, but it’s still infinitely better than the shoulder-length waves his mother had forced him to keep all his life. 

“Chanyeol accidentally spit gum in my hair so we had to cut it out,” is the only explanation he offers to his horrified parents, and the older boy even takes the scolding (from both sets of parents) with sheepish guilt and endless apologies until the two of them are alone. 

“You look like you got stuck in the lawn mower,” Chanyeol giggles, earning him a punch to the gut and a growled “shut the fuck up” as he tries to run his knobby fingers through the uneven tufts sticking up on Kyungsoo’s head. He does his best to smooth out the jagged lines though, and Kyungsoo awaits the results with tightly shut eyes and bated breath. It still far from perfect, but Kyungsoo has to admit that it’s better than struggling for hours in the mirror. 

It feels lighter- freer- in more ways than one, and Kyungsoo can’t stop running his hands through it for weeks, giddy with just how quickly his fingers slip out of the short strands when he washes his hair at night or how the wind can blow as hard as it wants and none of it gets in his eyes. They must have cut only a few ounces at best, but Kyungsoo feels like an entire building has been lifted off his shoulders every time he thinks about it.

He lives for the small victories after that, taking his parents’ harsh criticism with gritted teeth, but slowly and surely molding himself in the person he wants to be. The new developments do not, however, come free of their own setbacks. 

 

The first time Kyungsoo wraps himself in a binder, he passes out in the middle of the cafeteria and lands face-first in his own lunch tray. He throws a hysterical fit when he wakes up and realizes that the school nurse had cut the binder off of him, screaming at her about how he’d had to save up for _months_ to afford it and that he’ll never be able to get a second one without his mother noticing.

The nurse mutters her apologies and offers ankle wrapping as a half-assed substitute, but Kyungsoo storms out before she can even open the drawer to get it.

He gets his second one many months and dozens of helpful websites later, pulling Chanyeol into his room one morning before they go to the mall and telling the older boy how to take it off in case he passes out again; he can’t afford this one to getting ruined. The damn thing is uncomfortable at best and rolls up at the bottom every time he gets out of the car, but he can finally look in the mirror after getting ready in the morning and not feel completely _wrong_ about the person staring back at him.

He still wears his clothes two sizes too big, but there’s noticeably more room in his sweatshirts and he never realized just how _awesome _it is being able to see his feet when he looks down.__

Even Chanyeol’s smile is a bit brighter than usual as they walk through the stores side by side and rifle through racks of clothes for the most ridiculous patterns they can find. By the second outfit, Kyungsoo goes willingly into the fitting rooms and comes out with a heart-shaped grin, striking tentative poses as Chanyeol whoops his encouragements. Their choices for Kyungsoo are a bit more reasonable since he actually intends to _wear_ the clothes they pick out, but all bets are off for Chanyeol when they pick out a bright green monstrosity of a polo with pineapples and pink flamingos dancing across the fabric. Kyungsoo laughs so hard his ribs hurt and he feels lightheaded, but after adjusting his binder and breathing for a few minutes without it in the safety of a dressing room stall, they’re ready to head on to their next conquest. He buys shirts that fit the new dimensions of his chest and some that don’t for the days he needs to take a break, and he can truly say that he’s never been happier after a shopping trip. 

And if Chanyeol’s face-splitting grin were anything to go by, Kyungsoo would say that Chanyeol just might feel the same. 

\-- 

As the years go by, Kyungsoo can’t help but notice everyone around him at school checking their wrists more and more often. Most of them are fruitless efforts threaded with teenaged desperation, but some of them do eventually find red letters swirling across their skin and another person with the complementary name written on theirs. Kyungsoo is a little more hesitant to look. He “accidentally” makes sweeping glances at wrists when he sees a cute boy or girl cross his path, and even more “accidentally” flicks his gaze down to his own, but every time his anxiety (and not hope- _definitely_ not hope) is quelled by nothing but smooth white and tangled blue. 

Chanyeol, however, is bound by no such subtlety. He blatantly checks his arms every time he thinks about it and puts no effort in hiding his disappointment when he finds nothing there, especially when he starts dating. Not having his date’s name on his wrists does nothing to deter him, though. More often than not, it makes him double his efforts in trying to _make_ him their soulmate because he still believes in all that hocus pocus. He swears that every girl he dates _has_ to be the one- he’s just missing something that would make him hers. Kyungsoo always fights the urge to roll his eyes when his best friend goes on one of these rants, but he’s no less there to pick up the pieces every time the girl finally decides to stop wasting her time on something that’s not meant to be. 

Through it all Kyungsoo pushes down the sour bile rising in his throat at the mention of his own soulmate being out there somewhere with his name written on their skin. It’s not that he doesn’t want a soulmate- of course he does. He just doesn’t want to think about the possibility that the person he supposedly belongs with won’t have his real name there- that he’ll be destined to someone with a name that doesn’t really belong to him permanently scrawled across their skin in bright, disgusting red letters that would forever serve as a glaring reminder that he doesn’t truly belong with anyone. He brushes all those thoughts aside though in favor of listening to Chanyeol go on and on about how his new girlfriend is definitely “the one” this time- she has to be. The older boy’s wrist is still blank, but he’s determined that it won’t be for much longer. (And when he’s wrong, Kyungsoo pushes down the bile again to listen to the waterfall of heartbreak.) 

\-- 

If anyone were to ever ask, Do Kyungsoo has only ever drank his coffee in any way other than black once in his entire life- nearly choked to death he hated it so much. (“Black like your soul…” one of his friends in high school had muttered, and Kyungsoo had promptly punched him in the gut.) 

Chanyeol, however, knows better. Kyungsoo refers to it as the worst day of his life (they both know it’s bullshit) when Chanyeol brings them Starbucks one day during Kyungsoo’s finals week. Having no exams and too much energy to begin with himself, Chanyeol doesn’t really need the caffeine like Kyungsoo does, but he buys a venti size for both of them and rushes back to their table as if the world is going to end if he doesn't get there fast enough. 

Kyungsoo doesn’t even lift his eyes from the formula sheets splayed out in front of him, just taking a big gulp of whatever Chanyeol puts in his waiting hand as soon as he feels the touch of cheap cardboard against his fingertips. It takes a second to process exactly what it is that he’s tasting- something smooth. Dark. Almost… minty? He takes another gulp and lets it linger on his tongue this time. Another. The drink is almost half gone by the time Chanyeol even takes his first sip, and when he does, Kyungsoo thinks he might as well have shoved an entire lemon down his friend's throat. 

Chanyeol’s face contorts in disgust and he all but throws the cup back onto the table as he sputters and shakes his head. “UGH, FUCK, what the HELL??” he spits out. 

Kyungsoo merely raises an eyebrow at him. “What?” he asks slowly, taking another drink and watching passively as Chanyeol suffers. 

“I gave you mine! This shit tastes like death,” the older boy whines, shuddering as he pushes the cup farther away. “And calculus.” He makes a grab for Kyungsoo’s cup, but the latter is quick to yank away. 

“What did you get?” Kyungsoo asks, pointedly holding his cup just barely out of reach of Chanyeol’s wiggling fingers. 

“Peppermint mocha now give it back!” The taller boy flops his obnoxiously long body onto the table to reach even farther and snatches the drink from Kyungsoo’s frozen hands. 

_Peppermint mocha: the fad drink of all winter fad drinks,_ Kyungsoo thinks, his eyes widened in horror. He’s ruined. 

Chanyeol whines more when he tries to take a drink and finds most of it gone, shaking the cup with an almost hollow sound and frowning. “You asshole, you drank all of it!” he pouts. His body is still partially flopped on the table, and he bends his neck to look up at Kyungsoo like his best friend had personally killed Baekhyun or something. 

"It’s not my fault you’re slow,” is all Kyungsoo answers before plucking his rightful coffee from Chanyeol's fingers and taking a long sip. (He absolutely _does not_ grimace when the bitterness hits his tongue. He doesn’t. Honestly.) “You’re the one who gave it to me in the first place. Maybe you should have paid more attention.” 

Chanyeol’s whines reach an unbearable volume, but Kyungsoo tunes it out in favor of returning to his notes. Chanyeol always loads his drinks with an obnoxious amount of sugar and frills and whatever else is available- he claims that he likes it better when it tastes like the sound of violins and his mother's name- but Kyungsoo has no such attachment. “I can’t ruin her name with something like _math_ ,” Chanyeol had said one day, pouring an endless stream of sugar and cream into his cup until the deep mahogany of the espresso had turned practically white. “I guess it makes more sense for you though since you like all that numbers bullshit,” he'd added, almost as an afterthought. It had earned him a shove and a kick in the ass, but Kyungsoo had made sure to ask for extra cream in Chanyeol’s order when he bought them their coffee the next day. 

Baristas seem to “accidentally” give him the wrong drink rather often in the winter after that, but Chanyeol just hides his knowing smile behind the rim of his cup and lets Kyungsoo pretend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please please please tell me what you think ;; i'm shaking out of my skin with nerves for this story. it means a lot to me on so many levels, and i poured over a year of my time into it both writing and contemplating what it meant to me and just getting the confidence to put something like this out there for other people to read, so any kind of feedback would be a boost to get me to post the next parts
> 
> also! there are a few much darker scenes i cut from this part because i wanted the story to be lighter and not focus so much on the gloom and doom of transness, but if there's interest in them i can post them as separate one shots for the series. there's only one reference i didn't cut from the main story, but the rest works perfectly fine either way


	2. A Platonic Tonic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first of all, thank you so much for the response on the previous chapter ;; it honestly means so much to me <3
> 
>  **WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:** minor character death, detailed dysphoria, brief parental abuse (kyungsoo gets slapped), and mention of recreational marijuana use
> 
> the beginning of this chapter is pretty rough, but the rest of the fic gets much lighter from here! also, the prom picture scene is inspired by [this](http://mongdo.tumblr.com/post/118498878095) right here because look how cute???
> 
> AND NOW THERE'S A SUPER [CUTE](https://artbythenoodleboy.tumblr.com/post/159567956600/a-massive-grin-is-stretched-across-chanyeols-lips) [FANART](https://artbythenoodleboy.tumblr.com/post/155849411685/the-picture-turns-out-terrible-chanyeols-grin) made by [syenya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Syenya)/[yehetnoodleboy](http://yehetnoodleboy.tumblr.com) ;;;;;;;;;;; (updated with a second one!!!)

Kyungsoo knew long before it actually happened that he and Chanyeol would outlive Baekhyun by a long shot- he just never really thought through to what it would be like when the day finally came. It’s no surprise to him when Baekhyun starts slowing down bit by bit as the years go by. The black mask around the animal’s beady eyes fades into the grey fur surrounding it, and he pays less attention to the endless array of toys he’d hidden around the house.

Chanyeol, however, holds on to his denial like it’s the one thing that could make Baekhyun live forever. Kyungsoo almost wishes it had been.

It’s not Kyungsoo’s first (or last) brush with death, but it is Chanyeol’s. The younger boy makes his way over to his best friend’s house with algebra books in hand because he _knows_ Chanyeol hasn’t studied a single second for the exam he has the next day beyond the crash course they had a few weeks ago, and goes straight up the stairs to Chanyeol’s room. Kyungsoo’s own calculus exam had been that morning, so he figures he finally has time to beat a few more equations into Chanyeol’s head before he fails yet another chapter.

Once he gets there, he never gets the chance to even think about opening the book.

As soon as Kyungsoo walks through the doorway, he sees his best friend slumped on the floor, gangly teenaged limbs all crossed tight and a lump of fur cradled delicately in his arms.

Chanyeol is very _very_ quiet. Baekhyun isn’t moving.

Kyungsoo approaches his friend slowly, kneeling down beside him when he can and settling the textbook on the floor with as little sound as possible. Chanyeol doesn’t look up from his pet’s limp body, and Kyungsoo’s heart positively aches from the look in his eyes.

“Baekhyun won’t wake up,” Chanyeol croaks. His usually booming voice is soft and trembling, his hands holding Baekhyun in much the same way. The animal’s eyes are closed, but his body is still and he’s not making any of the usual squeaks or yips he does in his sleep. They both know what’s happened. Chanyeol has to know-

“Kyungsoo, why isn’t he waking up?” Chanyeol asks. The older boy sounds like he’s drowning, choking on the very air he’s breathing. Tears finally slip past the floodgates and stream down his face. He uselessly tries to sniff them away, but they don’t stop coming.

“Chanyeol…”

Kyungsoo is far from the affectionate type, but he doesn’t even think twice before wrapping his arms around his best friend and pulling him close, his own hands trembling as he feels Baekhyun’s fur press against his chest with no warmth to accompany it. He’d expected Chanyeol to sob openly, all the normal drama and theatrics that are usually tied to Chanyeol’s emotions exploding out of him in the worst way possible, but it never comes. He stays eerily quiet and curls against Kyungsoo’s chest, sniffing occasionally as silent tears soak into the younger boy’s shirt.

He doesn’t even ask Kyungsoo to stay the night; they stay curled up on the floor until the pitch black sky outside his window dissolves into a soft periwinkle and their limbs are stiff. When they finally pull themselves up, Kyungsoo helps lay Baekhyun into a shoebox lined with his favorite towel and a few well-loved, teeth-frayed toys. They’ll worry about the burial in the morning, but for now, Kyungsoo’s priority is ushering Chanyeol into bed.

He knows Chanyeol won’t sleep- neither of them will- but pillows are infinitely more comfortable than floorboards for misery, and the younger can already feel bruises forming on his knees. Chanyeol nearly crumples right back to the floor as soon as he tries to stand- from stiffness, exhaustion, or something else entirely Kyungsoo couldn’t say- and leans heavily against his best friend as the younger tries to guide them to his bed.

Once he’s settled, Kyungsoo snags a water bottle and a pack of crackers from downstairs that Chanyeol barely even presses his lips to, but stays by his side for the rest of the night. Impromptu sleepovers between the two of them are not uncommon, so Chanyeol’s parents don’t even blink when Kyungsoo comes downstairs first, bleary-eyed and wrapped up in one of Chanyeol’s old sweatshirts.

“You’re up early Kyung,” Chanyeol’s mother comments, ignoring the dark bags under the young boy’s eyes and the drying patches scattered across his chest.

“Baekhyun died last night…” is all he says, and both parents immediately set down their morning coffee. Chanyeol’s father presses his lips into a thin line and scrubs his hands over his face; his mother merely stares at the table.

“Is he awake?” the older man asks. Kyungsoo shakes his head.

“I just got him to fall asleep,” he answers. “It probably won’t last long though.”

The older man nods grimly and recovers enough to pour Kyungsoo a small cup of coffee that he graciously accepts. The bitter liquid burns the whole way down, but Kyungsoo barely notices beyond the much-needed caffeine seeping into his veins.

“Thank you Kyung,” Chanyeol’s mother says as she sets a plate of toast at the table, her husband quickly echoing the sentiment before Kyungsoo makes his way back upstairs with toast in one hand and fresh black coffee in the other.

Chanyeol makes his way down not much later with Kyungsoo hovering close behind, breadcrumbs clinging to his face as he stumbles down the stairs. He slips away from Kyungsoo and into his mother’s arms as soon as he lifts his head, curling in on himself so he can duck his head under her chin. It’s a painful, pathetic sight, and his father offers a note for school for both of them, but Chanyeol softly declines.

“Gotta take my math test…” he mumbles. “Kyung helped me study…” and his parents don’t press it any further.

They hold a short funeral in the back yard, a tiny wooden cross marking Baekhyun’s freshly dug grave nestled among the mugunhwa bushes. Pillows of pink and purple flutter gently in the morning breeze, the shadows they cast burning their image into Kyungsoo’s eyes as they dance across the rusty brown soil. Chanyeol’s mother plucks a chrysanthemum from a nearby bush, and lays it gently at the base of the cross, her lips working around a quiet prayer before they go their separate ways for the day. The boys are a little late for school and Chanyeol bombs his test more so than usual, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. Most things are lost on the older boy for the next few days as Kyungsoo helps him pack up Baekhyun’s remaining toys and supplies, everything from his cage to his tiny knit sweaters all being stashed away in a box to donate to the nearest pet refuge; Chanyeol doesn’t want another pet, so there’s no reason to keep any of it.

He does, however, hold on to one of Baekhyun’s toys as a keepsake: a tiny cartoon radish that Kyungsoo had bought him a couple years back. Baekhyun had almost immediately chewed one of the arms off, but Chanyeol insisted that it was his favorite. It stays on his shelf long after he moves with Kyungsoo to the States, greeting them with a wide drawn-on smile every time they return home.

\--

In sophomore year of high school, Kyungsoo’s teachers start telling his parents that he’s brilliant, and thoughts of soulmates are set aside for thoughts of college entrance exams and universities. Science and deriving equations come easier to Kyungsoo than breathing on most days, and scholarship offers from major universities start pouring in before he even knows what to do with them. He wants to go to a university as far away from his hometown as possible- Brussels, Los Angeles, Milan; anywhere but here- but he knows his parents would never agree.

In sophomore year of high school, his father dies and his mother refuses to let Kyungsoo leave. “It’s time you start being serious Kyunghee,” she says through a mouthful of tears, eyes red-rimmed and fiercer than he’s ever seen them. “No more of this boy clothes and short hair nonsense. You are a young woman Do Kyunghee and it’s time you start _acting_ like one.”

She tears through Kyungsoo’s closet that night in a fitful rage, throwing all of his (and several of Chanyeol’s) baggy sweaters and straight-cut shirts in the trash at light speed before dragging out and shoving all the nice blouses and tight skirts he’d kept hidden in the bottom of his drawers back onto their hangers. A tiny black satin dress comes out of the mix, and she demands that he put it on- that he wear it to his father’s service.

Kyungsoo opens his mouth to protest, but with a sharp crack, his cheek is burning red and his words die on his tongue.

“I don’t give a _damn_ what you have to say about it Kyunghee!” his mother screams, arm still raised and shaking with fury. “Your father is dead and you are going to _wear_ this dress to his funeral if I have to sew it on you myself!”

Kyungsoo takes the garment into trembling hands and backs away toward the bathroom, his eyes never leaving the woman in his bedroom as she turns back to his dresser and continues on her rampage. From then on, Kyungsoo knows he has to be more careful.

Although his mother never hits him again, the fear of it never really leaves him. Every time she gets that sharp look in her eye or her delicate hands twitch a little too much after someone calls him “Kyung” (or God forbid “Kyungsoo”), he braces himself for another blow. The day of the funeral, he decides not to chance it at all and slips into the simple black dress his mother laid out for him without a word of protest.

But maybe that’s because the second he sees himself in the mirror he loses his ability to breathe.

The black satin accentuates the slope of his curves and the fullness of his unbound chest with its tight fit and low V, the waist tapering down to emphasize the broadness of his hips and the slender legs beneath them. He can’t breathe.

Through the mirror he can see the floor open up beneath him and inky, disgusting, black hands reach up to wrap around a body that doesn’t look like his- doesn’t _feel_ like his- obsidian nails digging into his skin as they try to pull him down into the void. The universe tilts sideways but he doesn’t tilt with it. He can’t breathe.

The hands gouge everything out of his chest and leave him hollow and empty. His vision goes blurry even as he sees everything in burning clarity- sees the way the very air around him is falling apart and pressing in and tightening the dress around his body like a noose around his neck. His head is dropping. His lungs are dropping. His everything is just dropping dropping _dropping_ through the void, pulled by those black hands that won’t let him go and everything is falling and shaking and turning and empty and _he can’t breathe he wants out he wants out he can’t breathe he can’t breathe he can’t-_

The next thing Kyungsoo knows, he’s waking up on the floor in front of a broken mirror with a splitting headache and throbbing shoulder. His aunt is kneeling over him with worry and tears in her eyes as his mother looks on from the doorway, face cold as she mutters, “Stop being overdramatic Kyunghee. Today isn’t about _you,”_ and walks away.

Kyungsoo makes the decision then and there that if he leaves, he’s never coming back.

 

He destroys the dress after the funeral, ripping and tearing at the seams with his bare hands until not a single one is left intact. He drags it across the floor, blanches it with hot water, rips at it with his teeth- anything he can to make the fabric as unrecognizable as possible. By the time he’s done, he’s gulping down lungfulls of oxygen and his hands are shaking too much for him to hold onto the pieces, but the dress is finally no more.

It falls to the floor in slow motion where he leaves it to be shoved in a corner and never seen again. Later ( _years_ later when he’s kicking Chanyeol out of that particular corner to continue packing his bags for the States) he finds the shredded garment again, the once inky black satin now faded to a tired grey and stiff around the shredded seams- harmless. He slides to his knees to join Chanyeol on the floor and stares hard at the thing that caused him so much pain all those years ago. A pang of sadness presses against his chest as the soft fuzz disintegrates between his fingers and the memories pry their way into his head; there’s sadness for his father’s death and the rift it put in his family, but never for the decisions he made because of it.

He knows he’s lingered too long when Chanyeol prods him with a socked foot and rolls over, fuzz clinging to his curls and glasses askew on his nose as he drawls a low “wussat?” and flops his head onto Kyungsoo’s thigh.

The younger boy stares at the remains of the dress a moment longer, rubbing the worn fabric between his fingers before letting it flutter into the trashcan situated at his side. “It’s nothing,” he says, covering it with some stray pieces of paper and shoving Chanyeol off him. “It never fit me anyway.”

\--

He goes through the next year in high school mostly living out of Chanyeol’s house (not that that’s much different from before) and building himself into the person _he_ wants to be- not what anyone else wants. It’s easier said than done, but he gets through it with the support of his small friend circle and Chanyeol’s steady yet bumbling presence by his side. Scholarship offers still pour in on top of all his homework and brandish increasingly higher numbers as his grades rise, and although his mother wants to keep him close, she can’t turn a blind eye to the dollar signs dancing across the pages.

Despite Chanyeol toying with the idea of dropping out, he still helps Kyungsoo sort through all the letters in the evenings between history essays and video games, and offers what little insight he can, although that mostly results in more Cheeto dust fingerprints on the paper than any actual advice. Kyungsoo still drops in for homework and sorting anyway, and if he gets annoyed at all the artificial cheese left on his papers, he doesn’t say a word about it. Most of the time. 

They don’t limit themselves to college talk though- teenaged boys have much more important things to talk about than that. Chanyeol had gone through his fair share of girlfriends that year and had a good amount of heartbreak to show for it, but he doesn’t let it get him down for too long. Kyungsoo had met very few people who trusted the idea of soulmates more than his best friend, and every lost girlfriend, while still being hurt by the initial breakup, only made him more determined to find the right person. The younger boy leaves most of the talking to Chanyeol about the subject, preferring not to stir up unwanted anxiety about his own soulmate troubles, but listens to Chanyeol’s bizarre theories just like he would anything else.

“The weird thing about this whole soulmate business,” Chanyeol remarks one night, legs hanging off the edge of his bed and head pillowed on a textbook he hasn’t even opened, “is that their name doesn’t always show up the first time you meet them. Sometimes things have to change or they have to change or the timing just isn’t right. Like, they aren’t quite your soulmate yet the first time you meet them, you know?”  

Kyungsoo doesn’t know, not really, nor does he particularly believe in his best friend’s endless optimism about the subject, but he nods at Chanyeol over his literature notes anyway and the older boy barrels on.

“Minkyu and Soojung hated each other freshman year, remember? And then she got thrown into that theater class she pitched a fit about but liked enough to decide to actually give a damn about something and BOOM! Her name shows up on his wrist at the final dress rehearsal after two whole years of knowing each other and they suck face on stage for ten minutes. Just like that,” Chanyeol finishes, arms splayed out beside him and all kinds of invading Kyungsoo’s space. The younger offhandedly brushes Chanyeol’s fingers away from his vocab notecards and sniffs.

“She was a brat back then anyway. Good for him,” he remarks, straightening the cards a bit as he tries to move them away from his friend’s gangly limbs. (His efforts are in vain though; the next second Chanyeol rolls over to him and crushes them all.)

“But that’s just it!” Chanyeol shouts. “His soulmate wasn’t the Soojung that didn’t give a fuck about anything and wanted to make everyone else miserable! His soulmate is who she is now.”

Kyungsoo finally looks up from his notes and stares at the other in genuine interest. “So does that mean someone could stop being your soulmate?” he asks. “Like if the person they were before was right for you but then they change into someone who isn’t?”

Chanyeol pauses at that, lips pressed tightly together and brows furrowed as he thinks. “No?” he says slowly, as if tasting the answer on his tongue. “I mean. I don’t _think_ so. How could someone be your soulmate if you weren’t going to be good for each other in the long run? The whole point is that you’ll be together forever, isn’t it?” He rolls back over to stare at the ceiling, face still pinched in thought and butt nestled snugly on top of examples of metaphors, foreshadowing, and the definition of irony. He raises his arm into his line of sight to marvel at the bare, unmarked skin of his wrist and hums. “Kind of makes me wonder if I’ve already met them and just don’t know it yet,” he muses, and Kyungsoo gives up on studying completely.

He stares at his own slightly less unmarked wrist, powerless to stop the stab of panic that shoots through his veins. He knows it has nothing to do with the thick pink line blazing a trail up to kiss the inside of his elbow, but he slips his other hand over it anyway. He rubs the blank space above his scar as if rubbing off invisible dirt and licks his lips. “’Them?’” he asks instead of thinking any more about it. “Not ‘her?’”

He looks up at his best friend, but the older boy’s eyes are still fixed on his own arm. Chanyeol just shrugs, his broad shoulders rustling Kyungsoo’s papers, and hums noncommittally. “People are just people,” he says. “Them being a girl or not a girl or kind of a girl wouldn’t make us any more or less good for each other.” He flips one more time and crushes Kyungsoo’s notes beyond recognition with a broad grin. “Hey, do you think you could help me understand this stupid English assignment we have to do? I’m pretty sure Shakespeare never actually existed and our teacher is just trying to screw with us,” he says, and just like that, the moment is lost.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and tells Chanyeol to move his fat ass off his notes if he wants any help, but he still thinks about Chanyeol’s words long after he’s already gone home wearing another one of Chanyeol’s old sweatshirts and pulls back the sleeves. At barely seventeen years old, he knows not having a name on his wrist yet isn’t an uncommon thing, but he can’t help wondering. What if he _has_ already met his soulmate? What if they’d met when they were still kids? Would they know him as Kyungsoo? Kyung? …Kyunghee?

A chill runs down his spine at the thought and he slaps a hand over his wrist, lowering his head as he gulps in deep breaths through his (Chanyeol’s) sweater. It smells like cheap teenaged cologne and socks, but it’s enough to keep him grounded, if only for the moment.

“ _It’ll be the right one,”_ he hears Chanyeol say. “ _Your name is Kyungsoo and that’s all there is to it.”_

Kyungsoo just wishes he could be so sure.

 

There’s even more to the convoluted nature of finding your soulmate though- another possibility that sets Kyungsoo even more on edge when he thinks about it too hard.

Kyungsoo has heard about the Pull before. It wasn’t exactly common, but it happened enough for it to be more of a romantic fantasy than a myth. Almost every love story in Hollywood features star-crossed lovers being Pulled together after some unfortunate circumstance kept them apart their entire lives, and people flock to the theaters to see it time and time again. It’s a rather melodramatic and impersonal way of finding the one you’re supposed to be with in Kyungsoo’s opinion, but the few people he knows who have been Pulled are no less happy because of it.

According to them, it had been like an itch they couldn’t quite scratch- a niggle in the back of their minds that had led them to a certain place out of nowhere and wouldn’t quiet until they met the person they were supposed to and their wrist burned with the red inscription of fate.

Chanyeol eats it up. He’s not afraid to drag Kyungsoo to every cheesy romcom or tearjerker that hits the big screen, and he watches in awe when the two leads are suddenly drawn to the same place after an entire movie of bickering or just barely missing each other. He never quite entertains the idea for himself (“pft, my soulmate won’t need some supernatural force to make them follow me around. I mean look at me Kyungsoo, come on”) but that doesn’t stop him from cooing over couples meeting at the park or a café and wondering whether they had been Pulled there or not. Kyungsoo merely rolls his eyes.

“Oh yes, I’d definitely want to go to some random place more or less against my will to meet some stranger that I’m supposed to fall head over heels for,” he’d grumble at Chanyeol between sips of black coffee, but the older boy wouldn’t be deterred in the slightest. He’d just ramble on about how ~romantic~ it could be if the person was someone you’d been in love with all along, and despite Kyungsoo having a bit more reason to worry about the Pull than most, he doesn’t have the heart to drive those stakes through Chanyeol’s dreams.

\--

Kyungsoo tries to date girls for years until he realizes that he doesn’t want to. He tries to date boys until he realizes that he comes home with more disappointment than boyfriends. Eventually he stops trying.

He asks someone to the prom his senior year strictly out of formality, but is immediately shot down, the boy much more interested in Chanyeol even though he’d already committed to going with his current girlfriend. The girl breaks up with Chanyeol two weeks before the dance anyway, her arm still bare and heart tired of wasting its time on something that wasn’t meant to be, but his suit has already been purchased and Kyungsoo _reluctantly_ gives in to Chanyeol’s begging to not make him go alone.

“Fine, but we are _not_ matching,” is Kyungsoo’s only demand, and Chanyeol nearly tackles him to the floor in happiness.

“Of course we are!” Chanyeol gushes as Kyungsoo struggles to pry his best friend’s unruly limbs off of him. “If we’re going together we have to match! It’s like the third law of the universe or something!”

“No, it isn’t and _no we don’t_ ,” Kyungsoo snaps as he breaks free, shoving Chanyeol to the floor and crossing his arms over his chest. Resolute. Final.

 

They match.

Kyungsoo actually feels a bit optimistic as he slips out of his front door, binder snug beneath his baggy sweatshirt as he tells his mother that he’s spending the night at Chanyeol’s, which- technically- wasn’t a lie. The woman in the kitchen doesn’t even look up at him as he leaves but it doesn’t deter him; these days it’s all he gets as permission anyway. The optimism comes crashing right back down when Chanyeol opens his front door and shoves (a much smaller version of) the exact same outfit he’s currently wearing into Kyungsoo’s hands.

“I have made a horrible mistake,” Kyungsoo deadpans as Chanyeol mutters a weak “tah-daaaah~” and flashes a sheepish grin. The younger boy almost turns and walks right back out the door, but once he has the suit on, he has to admit the color _does_ look good on him, and it would be such a shame to let all that money go to waste. Might as well get it over with.

If anyone were to ask, the only reason Kyungsoo went along with it was because Chanyeol’s mother had picked out his blazer from the same store she got Chanyeol’s, and the shirt Kyungsoo already owned just-so-happened to be the same color. Either that, or in the two weeks Kyungsoo’s outfit sat beside Chanyeol’s in the older boy’s closet, the colors just magically osmosed on to Kyungsoo’s clothes or something. Probably the latter.

Nobody really knows the real story, or so Kyungsoo claims, but Kyungsoo insists that he is very Not Happy about the arrangement. The thrill of anticipation racing all the way to his fingertips when he slips the dark grey jacket over his shoulders means absolutely nothing.

 

It also doesn’t mean anything when Kyungsoo has to fight down his smile when Chanyeol’s mother gushes about how handsome her boys look as she straightens their ties and fusses over Chanyeol’s hair much more than she probably needs to. Her son half-heartedly tries to push her hands away with an indignant whine, but still leans down so she doesn’t have to rise up to her tippy toes to reach him.

“Ummaaaaa we need to goooooo,” Chanyeol groans as he edges towards the door, black leather shoes shuffling across the floor as he tries to get them moving in the right direction. “We’re going to be late!”

Kyungsoo however, just takes it all in stride, scrunching up his face accordingly as Chanyeol’s mother runs her fingers hastily through his hair too and smoothes down his collar.

“No! I have to get pictures first!” the older woman says, and Chanyeol whines loud enough Kyungsoo almost mistakes him for a petulant child. “Just one picture!” she adds. “Every mother has to have a picture of her boys on prom night! 

Kyungsoo’s heart throbs painfully in his chest at her words. His own mother would probably burn the pictures if she ever saw them, but Chanyeol’s… actually _wants_ them? He doesn’t have much time to process the information before the woman is ushering them to the end of the hall, trotting away to get her camera and coming back with a barely-suppressed grin on her face.

“Quickly, quickly! Stand next to each other,” she says, whacking Chanyeol’s shoulder until he’s somewhere close to her liking. The two boys hover awkwardly beside each other, almost a full foot of distance between them before the woman sighs. “No no, you have to stand _closer_ ,” she demands. “If you’re only going to let me get one picture, it has to be a good one! Now put your arms around each other, come on.”

Chanyeol slumps in his place, whining some kind of protest and stamping his feet oh so maturely as his mother waves her hand at the gaping distance between them. Kyungsoo’s mind is still reeling a bit- _my boys_ she’d said- and it leaves something light and terribly unfamiliar bubbling in his chest as Chanyeol whines about how _unnecessary_ all of this is. He just wants to _go._

Clearly, Kyungsoo is going to have to do all the work here. The younger boy sighs softly as he scoots closer to Chanyeol, damning his narrow shoulders and small stature as he tucks himself under his best friend’s shoulder and wraps an arm around Chanyeol’s waist. It’s not _so_ bad, he muses as warmth seeps into his side and he presses close. It’s even better when Chanyeol’s mouth immediately snaps shut.

Kyungsoo misses the way the older boy’s back goes a bit more rigid at the touch, though, his slumped posture straightening into something more dignified and his neck stretching just that much taller than Kyungsoo’s as he seems to realize their proximity. He chalks it up to a hiccup or some other dumb sound Chanyeol makes on the regular and puts it out of his mind.

“Let’s just get this over with, yeah?” Kyungsoo mumbles against Chanyeol’s chest. “Let your mom have her picture.”

Chanyeol nods hurriedly and brings his arm up to settle across Kyungsoo’s shoulders, the weight of it pressing down on him and a little suffocating before he thinks better of it and lowers it to wrap around Kyungsoo’s waist instead. Here, Chanyeol’s hold feels solid- almost… comforting in a way Kyungsoo can’t quite explain. He pushes that out of his mind too.

The picture turns out terrible; Chanyeol’s grin stretches so wide it looked like he’s in pain and Kyungsoo’s is barely a curl of his lips, but Chanyeol’s mother hangs it like it’s an award-winning art piece. (And maybe she gives Kyungsoo a print as well that he keeps in the cover of his favorite notebook, but it’s _strictly_ for entertainment purposes.)  
 

It’s not until Chanyeol tries to set him up with a friend that Kyungsoo lets himself try the dating game again. His best friend explains haltingly over the phone that it’ll be different this time. “I know you’ve lost interest in girls but she’s- she’ll understand Kyungsoo. I _really_ think it’ll be different. Just give it a shot, please?” And only because it’s Chanyeol, Kyungsoo agrees. 

Her name is Kris and their blind date goes off without a hitch other than Kyungsoo grumbling about Chanyeol and all his damn tall friends, but he gets over it when Kris slumps her broad shoulders in on herself and lets Kyungsoo rest his head on top of hers when they settle in their seats to watch a movie. The movie is nice and Kris is nicer, but Kyungsoo knows his answer before their lips even touch for the first time at her front door. They still try for about a week before Kyungsoo can’t take the guilt anymore and pulls her aside saying that he’s sorry, he just really isn’t that into girls, and asks if they can still be friends.

The bright smile and stuttering laughter that spills from Kris’s lips isn’t quite the tearful rejection Kyungsoo had been expecting.

She waves a hand at his furrowed eyebrows and laughs wholeheartedly. “No, no! This is the best possible rejection I could have ever gotten,” she says as she squeezes their joined hands and flashes him a gummy smile. “I’d like that. Staying friends.”

And they do stay friends for a while, the three of them, but eventually Kris has to move to Canada and their Facebook messages become fewer and farther between. Pictures of her with a boy tagged as Kim Joonmyun start popping up on Kyungsoo’s newsfeed though, and he can honestly say that he’s happy for her when he starts seeing matching gold bands on their fingers and red writing on their wrists in every photo. The red letters on Joonmyun’s wrist spell out the only name Kris has ever had, and Kyungsoo can’t deny he’s at least a little jealous of _that_.

He hadn’t mentioned it to Chanyeol after the day he told his best friend about his name, but as more and more of their friends turn up with red scribbles emblazoned into their skin, Kyungsoo can’t help the claws of anxiety that start pulling harder and harder at his chest.

He still checks every now and then to see his own wrist still pitifully pale and blank, but it’s laced with a twinge of relief that he still has time before he has to face the music, whether it be a symphony or a catastrophe.

\--

Senior year brings about an increasing number of couples paired off by the red letters of fate and increasing panic about the future, soulmate related or otherwise. Kyungsoo flies through entrance exams like they’re nothing and gets into every university he applies to, but Chanyeol stops trying halfway through. The older boy falls further and further behind until he quits altogether, but he’s nothing if not completely supportive of Kyungsoo’s decisions.

He finally settles on a university in the United States, and it takes a huge weight off his shoulders. Signing and sealing the last envelope lets him breathe a little easier despite the mounting nervousness graduation is bound to bring, and Chanyeol hugs the life out of him as soon as he drops the letter into the mailbox. His mother is livid at all the planning he did without saying anything to her, but a full ride scholarship to a good university (housing included) and a tight budget makes it hard for her to argue, so she mostly holds her tongue.

 

Kyungsoo honestly hadn’t expected Chanyeol to follow him to the States; after getting his GED and a year of attempting community college, Chanyeol had decided that school really wasn’t for him, and despite what most people believed, he and Kyungsoo were in fact two separate entities. While Kyungsoo wanted to pursue a degree in physical chemistry, Chanyeol’s future was contained in a guitar case and his own vocal chords. Kyungsoo (inwardly) didn’t have much faith in the American music industry supporting foreign artists, but Chanyeol had enough stars in his eyes and beauty in his heart that Kyungsoo could never bring himself to deny him of anything. And besides, what kind of friend would he be if he poked holes in Chanyeol’s dreams when the older boy had never been anything but supportive of his?

He has to admit that having Chanyeol there makes the transition much easier though, and Kyungsoo is eternally grateful that the only thing that followed him from home was the one person that let him be who he was without question.

They decide to live apart but not too far away, Kyungsoo in a quaint single studio just on the edge of campus and Chanyeol in a run-down triple a little further into the city. They stay in touch and Chanyeol’s roommates aren’t entirely deplorable, so he drops by when he can between exams. The triple reeks of pot, dirty socks, and the sharp tang of metal more often than not, but Chanyeol seems happier than he’s ever been plucking away at worn-out guitar strings and singing along with another foreigner who owns entirely too many unicorn plushies for his own good.

The two of them work spectacularly well together though- Chanyeol and his strange roommate. They get gigs together at bars in Chinatown when the owners are feeling generous, and Kyungsoo is constantly amazed that Chanyeol’s borderline hyperactivity fits so well with someone who can barely hold their eyes open on a good day. Their third roommate stays mostly MIA, the only traces of his existence a few stray boxes lying here and there and a closed door down the hall, but neither boy seems to have any complaints about him. Kyungsoo figures the pot probably helps.

It turns out the pot helps out with a lot of things; Chanyeol ends up meeting and making more friends through “special social connections” in a week than Kyungsoo makes in a year, and despite Chanyeol’s limited English, they all understand him in ways that Kyungsoo’s friends never could.

The older boy barrels on in broken phrases with atrocious grammar while Kyungsoo speaks in complete, fluid sentences, but people are drawn to Chanyeol’s sometimes nonsensical stories and understand him just as well- if not better. They respond more to Chanyeol’s boisterous movements and enthusiastic vocabulary blunders than they ever do to Kyungsoo’s carefully constructed narratives, and they flock to Chanyeol like moths to a flame. It’s not so different from when they were at home in Korea, really. It’s just that here, away from all the people they grew up with and familiar mannerisms, the gap is sometimes a bit overwhelming.

Chanyeol is never one to exclude Kyungsoo from conversations though. He makes sure Kyungsoo gets the chance to speak when he gets a look in his eye like he wants to say something and doesn’t hesitate to introduce his best friend to practically everyone he comes across. He likes Chanyeol’s unicorn-loving roommate the best, and despite not saying more than one or two words to each other at a time, he feels the most at ease when he sees the Chinese boy floating around the edges of a social gathering, always sending Kyungsoo dimpled smiles before disappearing back into the crowds.

It’s not until the end of Kyungsoo’s third semester that he actually _talks_ to Chanyeol’s roommate without anyone else around (other than a purple unicorn pillowpet named Luhan) and finally learns why Chanyeol likes him so much. Despite the perpetual vacant look in his eyes, Yixing’s head is filled with incredible ideas that expand to every corner of the universe and yet hit so close to home it leaves Kyungsoo a little breathless. He’d never heard Yixing string more than one or two coherent sentences together before, but once he starts, Kyungsoo just lets him go on and on about whatever comes to his intricate mind until he trails off into nothing. Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes Yixing forgets to speak English halfway through, but Kyungsoo doesn’t doubt that whatever the Mandarin syllables spilling from his mouth mean, they are nothing short of profound.

After a while, he can’t help but notice the red symbols proudly displayed on Yixing’s left wrist as his nimble fingers dance over the frets of a guitar, the thick characters sloping across his skin in syllables Kyungsoo is hopeless to pronounce. He’s so caught up in the tangled lines that he doesn’t notice the music stopping or Yixing’s hands drifting off the strings until they’re held right in front of him, the other man smiling gently up at him as a dimple creases his cheek.

“Her name is Song Qian,” he says, tongue curling around the syllables like they were the most precious things in the world. “They showed up when we were seven.”

Kyungsoo’s head jerks up and his eyes widen impossibly larger than normal. “Seven??” he squeaks, and Yixing nods.

“Everyone knew it was going to happen,” he says, tilting his head slightly as if to see her name from a better angle. “We’ve been together our entire lives. We’re not dating or anything, but she’s definitely the most important person in the world to me.”

Kyungsoo’s eyebrows scrunch together and he considers the other boy with a look akin to utter disbelief. “Then why aren’t you dating her?” he asks, not really meaning any of the harshness that bleeds into his tone.

Yixing merely shrugs and resumes plucking at his guitar strings, a different song this time- something much slower that caresses the side of Kyungsoo’s cheek with its gentle rhythm. “We just never really felt like it,” he says, pausing long enough for Kyungsoo to believe that that’s all the explanation he’ll get before he picks it back up as if he’d never paused at all. “You don’t have to date someone just because you love them. That would get really hard, don’t you think? Dating so many people all at once… No, that wouldn’t work. Besides, I don’t think it’s legal to date your family.”

Kyungsoo balks. “Of course it’s not!” he nearly shouts. “That’s- that’s a completely different kind of love.”

Yixing nods slowly, the measured up and down gradually melting into the rhythm of his song. “But who says those are the only kinds of love? You can love your family, you can love your friends, your significant others, your stuffed animals- it’s all different, but love all the same, no?”

Kyungsoo considers the words, but doubt still lingers on his tongue. “But she’s your soulmate,” he says, and Yixing changes songs again. This time it’s something a bit more upbeat and the Chinese boy mouths a few words before answering.

“Yes.”

“…But you don’t love her as a girlfriend.”

“Nope.”

The younger boy pauses for more explanation, but it doesn’t come until long after the song is done and he’s nearly given up on the subject. It’s not uncommon for Yixing to lose his train of thought in the middle of a conversation, but Kyungsoo waits- hopeful.

Yixing takes a deep breath of the stale apartment air and packs his guitar back into its case, lowering the instrument down into worn velvet with utmost care. “Your soulmate is the person you care about most in the world. Someone that you would do anything for no matter what the cost and that you couldn’t live without. Your love for them doesn’t have to be romantic,” he finally says with a shrug, startling Kyungsoo a bit despite his soft voice. “How boring life would be if that were the only way...”

The Chinese boy gets up and wanders down the hallway to his bedroom with nothing more than a tiny wave, lips buzzing around parts of his infinite self-composed playlist and leaving Kyungsoo on the couch in stunned silence. It’s just then that Chanyeol decides to make his grand entrance, his long, bumbling limbs crashing through the front door and shattering the peaceful ambiance Yixing has left behind.

“Oh sweet Kyungsoo you’re already here!” he booms as he hurtles over Yixing’s guitar case and flings himself on the couch. “They’re having a chili dog eating contest over at Dan’s Den and Jongdae said he could beat me. I told him he’s full of shit and I can prove it, but I need witnesses to back me up.” A massive grin is stretched across Chanyeol’s lips and his entire body is practically wiggling in anticipation as he inches toward his best friend.

On any other day, Kyungsoo would have nothing to do with such a thing; he would wrinkle his nose, shove Chanyeol away, and tell the older boy as much, but the only words that float past his lips are “Fine, but I’m not cleaning up any of the mess you make afterwards,” and lets himself be pulled into Chanyeol’s shitty two-door sedan, his best friend screaming “Prepare to lose fifty bucks Kim Jongdae!” as they drive away.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know what you think of this chapter ;; the beginning of it was what i had the most... issues with in posting this fic, so i really want to know your thoughts


	3. Enter: Jongin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER** : alcohol use, drunk sex (both parties are fine with it before, during, and after), explicit sex, a little bit of dirty talk
> 
> it's lighter days from here on out my friends ^^ jongin is probably my favorite character to write, so i hope you like them! also, this is the first actual smut scene i've ever written so \o/ if this goes over well there might be more

One of the most important moments of Kyungsoo’s life happens on an unremarkable Friday some point in the middle of his fourth semester. There were no big exams or papers due the following Monday, and a group of friends wanted to shake the grunge out of their eyes and break away from the monotony of “coffee, class, study, nap, repeat.” Kyungsoo isn’t usually one for the nightlife and Chanyeol had already made other plans, but something compels him to humor his friends for once, and before he knows it, Kyungsoo is allowing himself to be stuffed into a clunky SUV with six other people and carted off to who knows where.

 

The night starts out just as it should; a few college kids sneaking into a club they aren’t quite old enough to be in looking for a good time and possibly someone to go home with at the end of it all. Kyungsoo had already learned the hard way that the latter isn’t for him, but it does nothing to stop him from accepting a drink someone across the bar insists on paying for.

One drink soon becomes two, however, two becomes a slew of shots, and soon Kyungsoo can’t even count the number of empty glasses laid out in front of him- let alone how many brain cells he’s lost in the process. He hazily thinks that he’s never actually been this drunk before as he locks eyes with another man across the bar, his tan skin glowing beautiful shades of amber and emerald under the barlights as he stares Kyungsoo down. Maybe he had been for a while.

Kyungsoo isn’t left to wonder for long; before he can fully blink his eyes, the man (boy? He can’t be much older than Kyungsoo himself) is sliding out of his seat and sauntering over to Kyungsoo with a determined tilt to his lips and filthy promises in his eyes. He’s hot as fuck and exactly Kyungsoo’s type.

“Having a good time?” the boy asks, voice high but so so smooth even though he must be shouting for Kyungsoo to hear him over the music.

The brain cells controlling his speech must have been the first to go, Kyungsoo thinks as he struggles for the words for a proper response. The boy raises an expectant eyebrow, and Kyungsoo blurts out the first thing he can. “I think I like tequila,” he slurs with as much confidence as he can muster. At least it gets the other boy to laugh.

“Oh good,” the stranger says as he slides onto the stool next to Kyungsoo and takes the latest shot glass out of Kyungsoo’s loose grip. “Money well spent then.”

And oh. No wonder Kyungsoo didn’t have to pay for any of these. “You’re too kind,” he forces out, wobbling a little too much in his seat for the simple nod he was going for while the other chuckles again. God he has such a beautiful smile.

“Maybe I should take this one,” the boy says, drawing the glass to his plush lips and waiting for Kyungsoo to wave a hand at him before pouring the amber liquid down his throat and swallowing it all down in one go. He only growls a little at the burn (much more elegant than the embarrassing noises Kyungsoo has been making since shot number two) and straightens himself fairly quickly. “My name’s Kai,” he says. “Dance with me?”

Kyungsoo’s not drunk enough to miss where this might lead, but Kai is really fucking hot and he finds himself taking the offered hand before he even really processes that it’s there.

Kai leads him onto the floor and wraps his arms around Kyungsoo’s hips before anyone else can get between them, fingers easily slipping into Kyungsoo’s belt loops and thighs slotting together like they were made for each other. Or maybe it’s just the alcohol talking.

It takes all of twenty three seconds of Kai grinding their hips together for Kyungsoo to realize that he doesn’t really care. As the bass pounds harder, Kai gets bolder, crotch lingering against Kyungsoo’s thigh with every swirl of his hips and mouth finding its way to the tender skin of Kyungsoo’s neck to trail love bites all the way up his jaw and back again.

Kyungsoo’s friends are nowhere to be seen amongst the crowd. He definitely knows where this is going.

It’s not like he can’t feel the tension bleeding in between his and Kai’s bodies -fuck can he feel it bad- he just likes to think he has a little more self respect than this. And maybe he does on a normal day, but after the copious amount of tequila shots the bartender fed him all night and the way Kai has been grinding against his thigh, body flowing like liquid sin against him, he finds it hard to say no to the tongue working its way down his throat.

“ _I want your cock_ ,” Kai breathes against his lips, low- _filthy_ \- and _fuck_ Kyungsoo wants him back. The boy’s hands wander to Kyungsoo’s ass and squeeze tight, forcing the two of them closer together as the dance floor pulses with life around them. Kyungsoo is entirely too drunk and way too turned on to realize just why that’s a problem, so he nods dumbly at Kai’s request to take him home and follows him out of the bar with no hesitation.

\--

The drive to Kai’s apartment is maddening; hands and tongues and fingertips trace against everything they can reach on each other, and the cab driver pointedly avoids looking in the rear-view mirror as they fly down the highway. Somehow Kai magically ends up in Kyungsoo’s lap on a particularly hard turn and breathes the remnants of alcohol into his lungs, whispering “ _fuck I want you so bad”_ as he grinds hard into Kyungsoo’s thigh. Even through his haze Kyungsoo can’t help but feel there’s something odd- something missing- but the thought flies right back out of his head when Kai’s teeth sink into his shoulder and groans so deep the vibrations almost make him come on the spot.

They stumble through the threshold of Kai’s apartment with their lips sealed tight, leaving a trail of clothing in their wake as Kai leads Kyungsoo to his bedroom until only their boxers and undershirts are left. The world shifts violently when Kai collapses back against his bed and drags Kyungsoo down on top of him, locking his ankles tight around Kyungsoo’s waist to push them closer.

It’s hot- _so_ fucking hot in here Kyungsoo feels like he’s dying as he reaches deft fingers beneath Kai’s shirt, the younger’s nipples already puffy and swollen as he thumbs them in lazy circles, and throws Kai in an absolute frenzy beneath him. _God_ he’s never wanted to taste anything so badly in his entire life.

He reaches for what he thinks is the hem of Kai’s shirt but ends up palming the other boy’s boxers instead. They’re wet- _so_ fucking wet how is that even _possible-_ and Kyungsoo wants wants wants, but before he can take, the world is whirling around his head again and Kai is pushing his hands away, eyes still dark but guarded and suddenly edged with insecurity.

Before he can get a word out, Kai is threading his fingers through Kyungsoo’s hair and pressing his body flush against him, sealing their lips once more and groaning low before pushing him back again.

“I have to show you something first,” he breathes against Kyungsoo’s kiss-swollen lips, voice slurring but clear as he reaches for his own boxers, works them off his hips, and oh-

That’s not a penis.

It takes a few moments for Kyungsoo’s mind to register through his haze- _three, two, one_ \- as he blearily stares at the smooth expanse of Kai’s pelvis, golden skin absolutely flawless as it slopes down into a valley of glistening pink flesh. _Oh._

He barely registers Kai still talking “-and don’t try anything funny because my roommate is really good at hiding bodies-“ before Kyungsoo throws his head back (a terrible idea, he realizes when the world lurches violently around him again) and laughs almost hysterically at Kai’s bewildered expression.

Kai shrinks back against the sheets and furrows his eyebrows tightly together as Kyungsoo continues to laugh. He sees panic slowly bubbling beneath the confusion in the boy’s eyes and uselessly waves his hands as an explanation. “This is about to get really difficult,” he chokes out, and reaches for the hem of his own boxers. He nearly falls off Kai’s lap in his haste to remove the last of his clothing, but the way Kai’s eyes go comically wide once the fabric hits the floor is totally worth it.

“Wha- I- oh my God,” Kai stammers, mouth gaping open in shock before he dissolves into giggles as well. “I guess neither of us are getting any dick tonight then,” he gasps between obnoxious (yet adorable) cackles.

It’s enough to send Kyungsoo into another fit of laughter himself, shaking and clinging to Kai until he’s gasping for air. He rests his forehead against the other boy’s soft bangs, bumps their noses together and smiles slow, still shaking from silent giggles as he presses their bodies close. “No, I guess we’re not,” he slurs, eyes locked on Kai’s swollen lips as he fights the urge to claim them. “I still think you’re one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen though,” he whispers, and Kai’s eyelids drop as he groans.

“Fuck… You too,” he breathes out, unconsciously lifting his hips to meet with Kyungsoo’s heated skin and swallowing his quiet gasp.

“I… I’ve never done it with- like- like this before,” Kyungsoo confesses, but Kai merely smirks against his lips.

“Don’t you worry about that,” he purrs. “You’ll catch on real quick." 

Before Kyungsoo can fully process the words, he’s flat on his back against Kai’s pillows with the younger boy hovering over him and his stomach churning in protest. Kai leans in one second to seal their lips together and is gone the next, hooded eyes boring into Kyungsoo’s as his fingers still against his thighs. “Let me know if you want me to stop. You can come up with a word or something if-”

“No,” Kyungsoo whines. “I’ll tell you just- _please_ touch me. Please.”

A shiver runs the length of the other boy’s spine, and he doesn’t hesitate to crush their lips back together as he spreads Kyungsoo’s thighs enough to slip in between them. All Kyungsoo can register is wet _amazing_ heat as Kai grinds their hips together with even more purpose than at the club, fingers digging red crescents into Kyungsoo’s thighs before sliding up to trail tight lines along the gentle curve of Kyungsoo’s hips. They work up under his binder and fight it off to join their pile of clothes on the floor, nails raking across Kyungsoo’s skin properly and leaving goosebumps in their wake. The older’s nipples perk up at the feather-light touch and Kai lowers his mouth to them ever so slowly, his heated breath ghosting over the puckered skin and dark eyes asking silent permission. He holds Kyungsoo’s gaze until the older boy nods, then draws one into his mouth and lavishes it with broad swipes of his tongue.

Kyungsoo writhes at the sensation, gasps tearing out of his throat as his hips jerk upwards and come away slick. Kai’s groan sends sweet vibrations through Kyungsoo’s chest, and he gives the other no time to recover before he switches to the other nipple and curls his tongue around it with renewed fervor.

Kyungsoo isn’t sure how much more of this he can take.

He chokes out a strangled “n-no more,” when the pleasure gets to be too much and Kai immediately pulls away, his shaggy hair sweeping across Kyungsoo’s cheeks as he comes up to press a kiss to the older boy’s lips. “You okay?” Kai breathes out, alcohol still sweet and thick on his breath and making Kyungsoo dizzy with it.

He jerks his head in a small nod and brushes his fingers through Kai’s hair. “Yeah, I just- I want yours off too,” he mutters, and Kai doesn’t need to be told twice.

His shirt is off in an instant, revealing a nearly flat chest and lightly toned muscles rippling with every movement. Kyungsoo doesn’t even have time to think about how unfair it is before Kai is attacking his lips again and sliding deft fingers down his stomach to play with the soft skin- so close to where he really needs them but not quite there. 

He gasps again when Kai’s pert nipples press against his own chest and arches up into the contact, the skin cold despite the heat of his body, and Kyungsoo remembers how badly he wanted to suck them into his mouth and taste. With some reluctance, he manages to wedge his hands between their bodies and push Kai up, eyes instantly narrowing in on the perfect pink nubs and drinking it all in. He drags his tongue across his lips as he imagines it and swallows thick. His eyes don’t leave Kai’s chest as he rasps out a ragged “can I?” and Kai can’t seem to nod fast enough.

With a breathy “ _yes please_ ,” he wraps an arm around Kyungsoo’s neck and draws him in close, body shaking with anticipation.

For what Kai’s breasts lack in size, they definitely make up for in sensitivity; the second Kyungsoo closes his lips around a nipple and drags his tongue across it, Kai lets out a slew of curses and pulls Kyungsoo’s face tighter against him, hissing out gasps of _yes_ and _just like that_ with nearly every breath. 

Blunt nails carve scratches down Kyungsoo’s back and spur him on, encouraging him to flick his tongue back and forth and suck harder on the rosy skin, one hand reaching up to play with the other nipple as his free hand slips between Kai’s spread thighs. It’s so, _so_ different from touching himself and he’s absolutely fascinated by the sounds falling from Kai’s lips- the constant “yes _please_ Kyungsoo”- as his fingers start to move in tandem with his tongue. Kai’s wetness is all over his hand, there’s a nipple in his mouth, and he _never_ thought he’d enjoy something like this, but he’s so turned on it fucking _hurts._ He can feel himself throbbing and practically dripping with it as he slides his first finger into Kai’s trembling body. He presses slow against Kai’s inner walls and draws them out with purpose, the younger humming low in appreciation and the vibration against his lips sending a jolt of electricity through Kyungsoo’s system.

In no time flat Kai is demanding another finger as he slips his own hand between them and presses the side of his palm against Kyungsoo’s slick folds, his eyes flicking down to the elder’s face only to see Kyungsoo’s eyelids flutter closed and mouth drop open in a silent gasp.

“Is this way okay?” Kai breathes out, still not moving even when Kyungsoo nods fervently. “Need to hear you say it,” he groans, voice low and already fucking wrecked as he holds his hands still.

“Yes, please _please_ touch me,” Kyungsoo begs, and finally _finally_ Kai relents. He brushes his fingers against Kyungsoo’s entrance, teasing and watching Kyungsoo’s face as he just barely presses in. It’s nearly enough to drive him mad with want, and with another almost breathless plea, Kai traces his middle finger across Kyungsoo’s slit and pushes through.

And this- this is somewhat familiar. Kyungsoo moans against Kai’s abused chest, giving it one last suck before switching to the other nipple and swirling it with his tongue. Kai rolls his hips down on the hand pumping in and out of him in response and keens, back arching into the prettiest bow Kyungsoo has ever seen.

“Shit. Kyungsoo,” he gasps when Kyungsoo’s fingers brush just the right spot and his hips twitch forward into Kai’s stuttering hand. “You’re so hot. So fucking hot. _Please._ ”

Kyungsoo’s thumb wraps around to flick against Kai’s little nub, slow and hesitant circles at first, but Kai’s answering moans and the desperate bucking of his hips makes Kyungsoo bolder, fingers curling inside him until the other bites down hard on Kyungsoo’s shoulder and jerks forward. His body goes rigid and the most beautiful sound tears its way out of Kai’s throat, but his hand doesn’t stop working Kyungsoo open until the latter falls over the edge with him, nails digging into Kai’s tan skin as euphoria crashes over him.

They gasp into each other’s mouths as they ride out their high, nails digging and fingers twitching as they come down until Kai slips his clean hand into Kyungsoo’s hair, combing the smaller boy’s bangs out of his eyes with a breathless laugh. “You still okay?” he slurs, to which Kyungsoo can only nod helplessly and smile. 

“Fantastic,” he breathes out, more than a little dazed as Kai continues to trail his fingertips down Kyungsoo’s sides.

“Good,” Kai purrs before pressing a short kiss to Kyungsoo’s lips and smirking down at him. “Because I’m not done with you yet.”

He only gives Kyungsoo a moment to recover before he’s kissing his way down the other boy’s chest, careful to skate over Kyungsoo’s breasts and leave feather-light touches on the angry red indents circling his ribs, threatening to become bruises if left unattended. “You should adjust your binder more often,” Kai whispers against Kyungsoo’s skin, tongue just barely brushing over the soft curve of his stomach as he makes his way down, further and further- slower and slower. “Don’t want you to hurt yourself…” The last word is released on an exhale as Kai walks his knees down lower, the tip of his tongue running up a nearly non-existent happy trail to Kyungsoo’s navel and swirling around the rim.

And Kyungsoo- he’s too strung out for this right now. Too high on the remnants of orgasm thrumming through his veins and drowning in the alcohol on his breath. He doesn’t fucking _care_ about his binder right now- all he wants is Kai’s mouth lower lower _lower._ He says so with a soft whine and a hand threading back into Kai’s silky brown hair, his hips canting up into the other boy’s tongue to show him exactly what he wants. He’s never let anyone do this to him before, but right now he just _wants_ and he knows Kai is willing to give, so he pushes his hips up again into Kai’s steadying fingers, and this time the younger seems to take the hint. He smirks against the crease of Kyungsoo’s thigh and exhales hot and heavy over the boy’s center in a breathy laugh.

“Is this what you want?” he asks, his voice so low the vibrations are making Kyungsoo clench around nothing in frustration.

He’s already shaking again as he gasps out a throaty _yes,_ and Kai’s tongue peeks out to just barely swipe over his swollen nub.

“Look at your little cock…” Kai purrs, his pupils blown wide and eyes dark with lust. “So eager for me…”

Arousal shoots hot and desperate through Kyungsoo’s veins at the words, just imagining what it would be like to watch Kai take all of him into that hungry mouth of his and let loose. He nearly comes again when Kai’s thumb presses into his clit with an almost lazy swirl, his tongue teasing just above his slick opening and _so_ close to where Kyungsoo really needs him. On any other day, begging would be entirely out of the question, but today he’s just drunk enough and Kai’s tongue is just hot enough that the string of _please please please please please_ tumbles out of his mouth before he can even think to stop it.

Kai just breathes out a laugh, presses a gentle kiss to Kyungsoo’s nub, and slowly presses his tongue inside.

Kyungsoo nearly screams from feeling of the slick muscle working its way inside him. His nails claw into Kai’s scalp as the younger picks up the pace, his tongue withdrawing just enough to flatten over Kyungsoo’s entire opening and drag its way up before the tip peaks under his still moving thumb to steal a taste. Kyungsoo can feel the wet slide of slick and spit all over Kai’s chin every time he dives in for more, and Kai’s warm breath washes over everything he can’t reach with every panting exhale. Kyungsoo is nearly in tears of beautiful agony by the time Kai finally slides two fingers in beside his writhing tongue, the probing digits finding his sweet spot almost immediately and setting off an explosion of stars behind his eyelids.

Somewhere along the line Kai’s other hand had disappeared between his own legs, his arm twitching in time with the flicks of his tongue and soon he’s gasping right along with Kyungsoo and spilling moans against Kyungsoo’s heated skin.

“ _Fuck_ you taste so good,” Kai groans out, and Kyungsoo’s done for. He comes with a shrill gasp and drags Kai over the edge with him with a sharp tug on his hair, muscles going rigid and euphoria shooting through his veins before his orgasm fizzles out and leaves his body singing.

It’s so calm after that- only Kai slowly withdrawing his fingers from Kyungsoo’s body with a wet squelch and panting softly, his lips trailing gentle, sticky kisses across the other boy’s face as he shifts his weight off of him. He mutters something Kyungsoo doesn’t quite catch and snuggles close, his lean body pressing against every inch of Kyungsoo’s until they practically melt together. Kai is still speaking to him, Kyungsoo knows he is, but the hum of Kai’s voice and the steady thump of his heart pounding in his ears has Kyungsoo slipping out of consciousness before the words ever reach him.

 

The next morning greets Kyungsoo with exhaustion and what’s easily the worst hangover of his entire life. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth like flypaper and his pulse pounds behind his eyes as he tries to sit up, groggy and not having a single fucking clue where he is. There’s no one beside him in this unfamiliar bed, no pictures on the dressers or on the walls to give him any clues. Only a vague, foggy image in the back of his mind and the clothes scattered on the floor lead him to assume that he definitely went home with some guy last night (and the pleasant buzz between his legs lets him assume it went well too) but there’s something else he knows he’s missing. Something-

“Hey, you’re awake.”

Kyungsoo whips his head toward the doorway and immediately regrets it, a deep groan spilling from his lips as his entire body screams in protest.

“Sorry sorry sorry!” the newcomer chants as they glide into the bedroom, arms held out in placation. “There’s water and painkillers on the nightstand,” they say softly. “My hangover is pretty bad too, so I can’t even imagine what yours must feel like. I really shouldn’t have bought you all those shots. I’m sorry.” The person continues to babble quietly as Kyungsoo downs the pills and chases them with the entire glass of water, chewing nervously on their lip as they wave their hands this way and that. It’s not until he blinks and clears his head a bit that he actually _looks_ at the stranger he slept with last night.

Slightly disheveled brown hair frames a pair of soft, anxiously round eyes, their flat nose sloping down to plush pink lips that are captured between perfect white teeth. Their jawline is soft but angular, freckled with a few small blemishes, and their skin is somewhat dampened with sweat, but Kyungsoo’s eyes don’t linger long on their face for long.

This person… Kyungsoo only has a vague memory of the face he’d seen at the club, and this one matches what he can remember, but the rest… not so much. The other’s hair is tied up in a small ponytail and there are definitely traces of lipgloss shining on their lips. Kyungsoo takes in the clingy pink sports bra stretched across their chest and the spandex tights sprouting from beneath their tiny black shorts and accentuating the curve of their waist. Kyungsoo clears his throat. “Did you, uh, work out or something?” he asks the stranger, his voice much raspier than he anticipated and laced with confusion.

The other person self-consciously pats the back of their hand to their cheeks and “ah”s. “Yeah, I dance in the afternoons,” they explain with a nervous chuckle. “It’s the only thing that motivates me to get up at a decent hour…” Their eyes travel to the digital clock on the nightstand beside them and Kyungsoo’s follow.

2:06pm.

 _Oh_.

Kyungsoo nearly falls out of bed when he sees the flashing numbers, but it only lands him face-first in the mattress with jackhammers pounding away at his temples. “Oh my God,” he groans, and there’s a pair of hands on him almost immediately.

“Woah hey, don’t- take it easy. Tylenol doesn’t work that fast,” the person says, gently grabbing Kyungsoo’s shoulders to pull him right side up and settling down beside him on the bed. Their sweat sticks to Kyungsoo’s still naked skin, but the support is welcome and their chest is soft. Wait-

Before Kyungsoo can form the thought, the person is speaking again, low vibrations surprisingly pleasant against his flushed cheeks as they hold him. “You don’t have to rush off if you don’t want to,” they mumble. “I mean… you’ve already stayed most of the day and you must be hungry after all that and I um, kind of want you to stay?”

Kyungsoo just barely resists the urge to shoot up again, staring at the other with wide eyes instead as they nervously chew on their lips. “You do?” Kyungsoo deadpans, and the person nods. Guilt (and probably leftover tequila) churns in Kyungsoo’s stomach as he studies the other’s face. A light pink dusts their skin and highlights their downcast eyes; they’re adorable. And yet…

“I’m really sorry,” Kyungsoo starts as he slowly peels himself away from the other’s warmth. “I’ve never had a one night stand before and I really don’t do this whole… casual hookup thing. I’m sure you’re a great… um, guy? and all but I can’t-”

“Oh! No no, it’s okay!” the other cuts in, smiling softly and eyes glowing with something Kyungsoo can’t quite place. “I don’t do that kind of thing either. And I guess I’m kind of a guy most of the time,” they muse, “but sometimes I’m kind of not.” They gesture to their clothes with a vague wave of their hand as Kyungsoo scrunches his brows and tilts his head. “I mean, when I’m like this I typically go by ‘they’ and ‘them,’ but ‘he’ and ‘him’ are pretty much always okay. I- I guess I don’t really know what I am; I just know that I’m not a girl.” The person straightens their shoulders a bit and regards Kyungsoo again, almost sadly this time. “Besides, I like dick entirely too much for it to work between us in the long run,” they say, coloring a bit at the blunt statement, “but that’s not why I want you to stay. It was great and all, but. I just. I just want us to be friends if that’s okay?” they finish softly, and with a start, Kyungsoo’s memory all comes flooding back. Flashes of the other’s impossibly smooth, uninterrupted skin, the wet heat, puffy nipples, the dizzy realization-

“Oh,” Kyungsoo says intelligently as he self-consciously raises the comforter to cover his exposed and very much _not_ masculine chest. “I, um… that’s cool?”

The other’s face flushes darker as they scoot a bit farther away and fidget with their hands, occasionally sneaking glances at Kyungsoo through the curtain of their sweat-soaked bangs and not at all like the confident man Kyungsoo vaguely remembers meeting at the club. “I don’t mean to push it on you if it’s something you’re not comfortable with, but I’ve… never actually met someone like me before, and I think it would be nice to have someone who understands, you know?" 

Kyungsoo does know, but it doesn’t stop a knot of anxiety from balling up in his stomach. The secret he’s kept for so long- the one thing he’s hidden from everyone since he left Korea- found out by this person he met less than twelve hours ago; Kyungsoo doesn’t even remember their name. And yet… they have a point.

No one but Kris had ever truly understood what Kyungsoo had been going through for practically his entire life, but Kris had been going in the opposite direction; they’d been trying to become everything that the other was so desperate to leave behind. As much as Kris had understood the discomfort, the pressure, the _wrongness_ , it hadn’t quite been… this. It’s still not the same, but it’s something. Even as the person across from Kyungsoo stares at him with lowered eyes and a bitten lip, Kyungsoo knows they’ll understand everything he’s been through with this, or at least most of it, and it’s a chance he can’t pass up.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo finally agrees with a smile, one hand lowering from the comforter to stretch towards the other and meeting their hand halfway. “I think I’d like that, um…?”

“Jongin,” the person- _Jongin_ \- chirps with a blindingly happy smile when their hands meet. The shake involves entirely too much movement for someone who’s supposed to be hungover, but Kyungsoo just knows that whoever’s name ends up on Jongin’s wrist will be the luckiest person in the world.

 

The small talk is significantly less awkward after their official introduction (Kyungsoo putting on clothes and no longer being completely naked helps quite a bit), and they fall into shy but easy banter like they hadn’t just been a drunken one-night stand. A quick glance at Kyungsoo’s phone shows no missed calls from the friends he left behind at the club, and it remains silent for most of the afternoon, only one message from a panicked Chanyeol coming in before he decides to leave. He hesitantly accepts Chanyeol’s offer to bribe Yixing into picking him up as he says his goodbyes to Jongin and promises to stay in touch.

When his best friend finally arrives, Yixing in tow and every bit as worried, Chanyeol sweeps him up in a bone-crushing hug and immediately starts spewing curses at the “friends” that hadn’t bothered to make sure Kyungsoo had made it home.

“Asher told me they lost track of you last night and just assumed you went home with someone and said they didn’t want to fucking _interrupt_ your booty call that very well could have been an ax murdering psychopath or something and I swear to God every single one of them is going to get a flaming bag of dog shit on their doorstep tomorrow morning just you watch,” Chanyeol rambles on, but Kyungsoo loses the ability to process most of it from the lack of oxygen getting to his brain. He taps out on the taller man’s bicep and Chanyeol promptly lets go.

Kyungsoo gulps in a deep breath to reinflate his lungs and refrains from rolling his eyes. “He’s not an ax murderer,” Kyungsoo wheezes, but Chanyeol’s eyes only fill with more panic.

“ _He_?? You went home with a guy?? Oh my f- Did he hurt you?” Chanyeol demands. “Do I have to walk back up there and-”

“No!” Kyungsoo cuts in. “No of course he- uh, they- didn’t. Everything we did was consensual… ish. I mean we were pretty wasted but they didn’t do anything I wasn’t okay with and they always checked,” he finishes, cheeks coloring as he remembers Jongin’s skilled fingers working inside him and Jongin’s tongue painting sin across his chest. Oh yes, it was very far from unwanted.

But Chanyeol keeps a skeptical eyebrow raised and his lips pressed tightly together. “Did he see… everything?” he asks in Korean, low enough for Yixing not to hear despite them speaking in a language his roommate was helpless to understand.

Kyungsoo appreciates the effort, but lets out a strained breath. “Yeah. He… They’re like me Chanyeol,” the younger mutters, and it’s more than enough for the rest of Chanyeol’s words to die on his tongue. It’s like a weight lifting off Kyungsoo’s shoulders to say it out loud- so much less suffocating and terrifying than when Jongin had said it because now the ball is in Kyungsoo’s court; he’s not the one getting shocked with the flood of information. It’s nice. It’s Chanyeol. It’s safe.

Chanyeol lets out a soft “oh” as Yixing distracts himself with his keys, and a wave of understanding passes over his features. “Oh,” he says a little louder. “I’m just… I’m glad you’re safe. Asher worried the shit out of me when he said no one knew where you were and I… If he would have said something earlier I-”

“I know Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo cuts in again. “I would have called if I’d been in trouble.” Chanyeol opens his mouth to say more, but Kyungsoo carries on with a soft smile. “Jongin and I are friends now,” he says. “We’re okay. _I’m_ okay. I just really want to go home before I pass out again. Please? I’m disgustingly hungover and my head feels like I got run over by a truck.”

Chanyeol nods but his eyes keep their edge. “Yeah I… Okay. Do you want me to stay with you?” he asks, knowing all too well that Kyungsoo is the rough equivalent of a sick child when hungover, and Kyungsoo nods readily.

“I will require copious amounts of crackers and Gatorade,” the younger announces. “And some haejangguk would be great.”

Chanyeol just laughs and loops his arm around Kyungsoo’s narrow shoulders. “Yeah sure,” he relents. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

Chanyeol never ends up making him haejangguk (no matter what state he may be in, Kyungsoo would never _actually_ allow Chanyeol in his kitchen), but he does agree to hang out with him and Jongin after a brief text from the younger asking about going to a free concert later that week. It’s a band Chanyeol likes and he’s still a bit wary about the stranger Kyungsoo picked up at a club, so his answer comes without hesitation as he lounges on his best friend’s couch with said friend’s head in his lap.

“I’m sure it’ll be fun,” Chanyeol says as he adjusts the warm blanket that miraculously fit around the both of them and hands Kyungsoo his Gatorade. “Besides, if he’s anywhere near as hot as you’ve been saying he is, I’ll have to see it for myself.”

Kyungsoo shoves a cracker in his mouth and grins. “Oh he’s definitely that hot,” he answers between swallows, and doesn’t even protest when Chanyeol starts stroking gentle fingers through his hair. They don’t particularly pay attention to the show on Netflix they’d put on hours before except to tell the website that _yes_ they’re still watching, but both of them are more than content snuggled up against each other as Kyungsoo fades in and out of consciousness.

 

He and Jongin text each other about anything and everything throughout the week. Easy conversations of exploration spring up like daisies as they wait for the concert to finally roll around, and Kyungsoo couldn’t be happier despite their unconventional start. Meeting new people had never been easy for him, but talking to Jongin is like a breath of fresh air; he doesn’t have to tiptoe around who he is or wonder if Jongin is ever going to ask about it because Jongin already _knows_ and _understands_ and the subject never even goes close to things like that anyway. He’s more than content talking about how much Jongin misses his dogs or the manhwa Kyungsoo absolutely does not have stashed in various drawers around his apartment. Only Chanyeol had ever been this easy to talk to, so he really can’t help the way his eyes occasionally linger over his wrist when he reaches to answer a new message.

By the time they finally arrive at the concert hall, Kyungsoo is shifting from foot to foot in anticipation as he waits beside Chanyeol by the front entrance. He’s too focused on looking at every tall brunet that passes them by to pay attention to the story Chanyeol has been rambling on about, and only a solid hand landing on his shoulder snaps him back to reality.

“Hey. Earth to Kyungsoo~” Chanyeol trills, waving his free hand in front of Kyungsoo’s face as he ducks to be in his best friend’s line of sight. “Have you been listening to me?”

Kyungsoo blinks. “What?”

“You’ve been spaced out for the past ten minutes,” Chanyeol whines, and Kyungsoo flashes a meek smile.

“Sorry. I’m just… looking for Jongin,” he says as he rises on his tiptoes and scans the crowd pouring into the venue once more. “I really want you to meet them.” Chanyeol huffs a sigh and gives up on the conversation; he knows all too well that talking to a focused Kyungsoo is like talking to a brick wall, so he turns away from his friend and joins in the search.

He’d only vaguely mentioned Jongin’s situation to Chanyeol, deciding instead to let Jongin explain what they wanted to whenever they felt like it, so he’s not really sure what to expect when Jongin finally does show up.

Jongin had said that he’d be wearing a navy blue sweater when they’d talked earlier, though, so Kyungsoo keeps a sharp eye out for one as he makes broad sweeps of every group that passes by. At five minutes to two, he shoots Jongin a quick “where are you?” and gets a “just saw you. be there in a sec :) ” in reply, a smile curling the corner of Kyungsoo’s lips as he reads the words. He looks up from his phone to scan the crowd once more, expecting to see Jongin’s smiling face towering over everyone else, but the only blue sweater he sees belongs to a girl with a pleated skirt and long long legs making her way toward the main gate. Kyungsoo looks right past her and neither of them pay her any mind until she stops right next to them, waving a hand in front of Kyungsoo’s face and calling his name.

Kyungsoo is just about to ask if he can help her when her face comes into focus and recognition hits him like a jolt of electricity. “Oh, Jongin!” he chokes out, and the person in front of him smiles sheepishly.

“Hey,” Jongin says softly, drawing their hand back a bit and shaking it in a tentative wave. They look absolutely stunning with soft kohl lines tracing their droopy eyelids and long eyelashes fluttering outward in delicate sweeps, but it’s… strange, and Kyungsoo has to take a moment to soak it all in. The sweater covers most of the swell of Jongin’s chest, but there’s definitely more there than he knows there should be, and the skirt rests just right on the curve of Jongin’s waist, floating down to mid-thigh and showcasing their gorgeous legs. Kyungsoo’s eyes rake up and down all of it, and he can’t help the low burn of attraction swelling in his gut as he completes the full circuit.

He swallows around the feeling lodged in his throat as he notices Jongin’s face fall further the longer he stares, and instead raises his arm to gesture to the boy beside him. “Um, Jongin, this is my, uh, my friend? My Chanyeol,” he stammers, eyes not leaving the tight _tight_ fit of Jongin’s shirt or the sparkle of their eye shadow as Chanyeol extends his own hand in greeting.

“Hi I’m his Chanyeol it’s nice to finally meet you!” Chanyeol says with all his usual enthusiasm, shaking Jongin’s hand as it’s offered and smiling brightly. He doesn’t even blink twice at Jongin’s decidedly not-masculine choice of clothing despite referring to Jongin as “he” every time they spoke of him, and Kyungsoo is infinitely grateful. “Kyungsoo’s told me a lot about you,” he says, and Jongin returns the shake.

They laugh nervously as they shoot Kyungsoo a fleeting glance, but their smile doesn’t falter. “Ditto,” Jongin says. They shift in their low heels and gesture toward the gate, bottom lip drawn between their teeth for a moment before they continue. “We should keep going. I don’t want us to miss out on the good seats because of me.”

The other two readily agree, although Kyungsoo is a bit quieter. He recovers quickly though, picking up on the conversation Chanyeol starts about what a hassle finding the right exit for the road had been, and the three of them enjoy the concert as if nothing were amiss. Chanyeol clicks with Jongin just as well as Kyungsoo had, and everything falls into place almost seamlessly. It’s surreal watching Chanyeol effortlessly pick up Jongin’s preferred pronouns, only stumbling once or twice after the initial correction and almost never messing up again. His best friend had never questioned Kyungsoo’s own pronouns, but Kyungsoo had established his preferences long before they switched to a language where it actually mattered, and Jongin’s situation was just… _different._ It sends his mind spinning, and before he knows it, the night is practically over.

 

Kyungsoo offers to walk Jongin up to their apartment when Chanyeol drops them off at the front of the building, and Jongin readily accepts. The younger walks with a bit of hesitation in their long strides as they walk beside Kyungsoo, their fingers nervously fidgeting with the hem of their skirt until the two of them stop at Jongin’s front door.

“Listen, Kyungsoo, I’m sorry I didn’t-”

“If you were doing it for Chanyeol you didn’t have to,” Kyungsoo blurts out. “He understands and would never treat you any differently.”

Jongin recoils a bit and their face pinches. “What?” they choke, but Kyungsoo barrels on.

“Chanyeol’s a really understanding guy, so you didn’t have to dress this way to hide anything from him. He’s been friends with me all our lives and he’s never once-”

Jongin cuts Kyungsoo off with a sharp laugh and crosses their arms over their chest. “I didn’t do this for Chanyeol,” they say. “I dress like this because I honestly feel like dressing this way sometimes. It may look like it, but I’m still not a girl Kyungsoo,” Jongin says gently, much more understanding than Kyungsoo thinks he deserves. “Sometimes I’m a boy and sometimes I’m not, but I am _never_ a girl, and I never pretend to be one for anybody. I know it’s a little different, but trust me. I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

Kyungsoo loses every word he thought to say as he stares at the person in front of him, mortification trickling down his spine that he’d just _assumed_. Despite Jongin being younger than him, Kyungsoo had never been as comfortable in his body as Jongin seems to be and he’s really not quite sure what to do with that information. He hadn’t even thought it was possible, and suddenly saying “sorry” doesn’t seem like enough.

“I’m sorry Jongin. I didn’t…” he begins, taking a deep breath as if to say more, but nothing comes out. The thought that he might have already screwed things up with Jongin suddenly presses in on him and it sends chills of panic through his chest. His mind spins in circles for a better apology, but Jongin just smiles and uncrosses their arms.

“It’s fine,” Jongin says gently, and it gives Kyungsoo enough courage to look them in the eye again. “Don’t worry too much about it, okay? If you or Chanyeol step on my toes, I’ll let you know. Trust me. I know you guys aren’t used to it yet, so I’m not going to cut your head off or anything if you trip up at the beginning.” Jongin extends a hand and Kyungsoo tentatively takes it, brows scrunching together when Jongin jerks his hand up and down.

“Reintroduction!” Jongin announces. “Hi, my name is Jongin but sometimes I go by Kai when I’m meeting strangers. I use he/him and they/them pronouns, and even though I’m usually a boy, sometimes I’m not and sometimes I wear skirts for no one other than myself. I like dogs and dancing and I think your aversion to soccer is a crime against humanity. Okay? Your turn.”

Kyungsoo is helpless to fight back the small laugh that bubbles in his throat as he returns the shake and rolls his eyes. “Hi, my name is Kyungsoo and that’s all I really go by. I use he/him all the time, I don’t ever wear skirts, and I think your obsession with soccer is a bit unhealthy, but at least your dogs are cute.”

Just like that, the tiny blip is smoothed back over with a swat to Kyungsoo’s arm and a hug before Jongin heads back inside. Chanyeol doesn’t ask when Kyungsoo heaves a sigh of relief as soon as he flops through the passenger door, and Chanyeol’s offer to binge-watch Breaking Bad at his place with Yixing is readily accepted.

 

They end up in the same position on the couch as the last time Kyungsoo saw Jongin, the younger boy’s head pillowed in Chanyeol’s lap as Netflix plays on in the background. This time Kyungsoo is significantly less hungover though, and munching on a bag of chips they managed to dig out of the pantry. It’s a flavor Kyungsoo knows no one in Chanyeol’s apartment likes, but it’s his favorite, and somehow it always happens to be there when he shows up. Yixing is lounging on the other side of the room, feet propped up on a chair as the rest of him lies on the floor and Luhan the pillowpet rests securely under his arm.

The episode they’re on is just a filler, so Chanyeol dares to break their concentration by speaking around a mouthful of lukewarm taquitos. “So Jongin’s pretty cool,” he garbles, ignoring the way Kyungsoo scrunches his nose in disgust and moves out of the potential splash zone.

“Yep,” Kyungsoo answers shortly as he brushes imaginary crumbs off his shirt. His eyes don’t leave the television even as Chanyeol follows him to the other side of the couch and shoves another taquito into his mouth.

“He- uh, they- seem really nice,” Chanyeol adds.

“Yeah, super nice,” Kyungsoo answers flatly. He squirms under Chanyeol’s weight and absently shoves at his best friend’s broad shoulders. “Will you get off me? You’re crushing my arm.”

Chanyeol immediately jumps up and arranges his own limbs to make sure Kyungsoo’s are out of harm’s way, but instead of actually getting off of him, Chanyeol just distributes his weight more evenly across Kyungsoo’s entire body and huffs. “So are you and Jongin, like… you know…” Chanyeol trails off with a wave of his taquito, and Kyungsoo snorts.

He swats Chanyeol away and brushes real crumbs off his chest this time. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking,” he begins, “then no. I already told you we agreed to just be friends.” When he finally tears his eyes away from the television, it’s impossible for him to miss the light blush dusting his best friend’s cheeks. Chanyeol won’t meet his eyes, but Kyungsoo _knows_ that look. “Why do you ask?” he questions slowly.

“I- I just. Think they’re nice. And cute,” Chanyeol mutters.

“Jongin’s not actually a girl Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo says in slight warning, but the other flails his arms.

“I know that!” Chanyeol flounders. “I know I’ve only ever dated girls before but that doesn’t- I mean I’ve _considered_ guys before. Kind of,” he says with a quick glance in Kyungsoo’s direction. “I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t- like- you know, you two weren’t a thing before I thought any more about it. It’s just- a thought right now though. I don’t even know if there’s anything to it yet. Just an… idea of sorts,” he stumbles. He flashes Kyungsoo a sheepish grin and immediately looks away, but the blush remaining on his cheeks is entirely too telling.

Kyungsoo’s chest flutters for a moment, but it’s gone as soon as it comes. “You like them?” he asks instead of thinking more about it, and a significantly more devilish grin spreads across his own face as Chanyeol’s blush deepens.

“I said maybe!” Chanyeol shouts, too loud for the tiny space of Chanyeol’s apartment, but Kyungsoo doesn’t mind and Yixing barely stirs. Instead, the younger rides through a rapidly shifting wave of emotions he’s helpless to understand and settles on poking his best friend in the ribs. 

“Well then, for future reference…” Kyungsoo begins, “you may be my best friend and all, but if you mess up it’ll be _your_ ass I’m kicking.”

Kyungsoo is well aware that, if anything, it’ll be the other way around; Chanyeol’s the furthest from a heartbreaker Kyungsoo has ever seen, and if the relationship ends badly it’ll be Chanyeol left sobbing on the floor with week-old pizza boxes every two steps until Kyungsoo comes to clean them up. Still, Chanyeol takes the threat very seriously and flails around even more, taquito crumbs flying into Kyungsoo’s face and hair like any normal Saturday evening. 

The exchange finally grabs Yixing’s attention and he shushes them with a smile, muttering something about not being able to hear as he cuddles into Luhan’s pastel purple fur, even though they opted to watch the episode with Korean dubs and they’re not entirely sure he’s even fully conscious. He’s out not two minutes later, but Chanyeol and Kyungsoo heed his warning until they too are fast asleep.

 

Chanyeol’s “maybe” still lingers in Kyungsoo’s brain for weeks after the discussion, but he doesn’t let himself think about it until he meets up with Jongin again for coffee at a café near Kyungsoo’s university. Jongin is dressed more like he had been at the bar the night they met: no makeup this time, but his clothes are cut loose and straight. They make small talk about classes and dance, merely an extension of their texts throughout the week, until Kyungsoo decides to be a little devious. He swirls his coffee- no cream, no sugar- and looks up at Jongin through his lashes, trying for nonchalant as he speaks over the rim of his cup.

“So Chanyeol asked about you the other day,” he says, trying his best for casual, but Jongin nearly chokes on his hot chocolate.

“He what??” Jongin sputters, and Kyungsoo has to hold back a laugh.

“He asked about you. About us.” He waves a hand between the two of them and hides his grin with his cup when Jongin blushes. The two new sides of him that Kyungsoo has seen are so vastly different from the person he met at the bar, but they’re no less entrancing. If anything, they’re more so. He lets Jongin flounder a bit more before he admits that he told Chanyeol they were just friends, but Jongin doesn’t quite relax.

“What about you guys?” he asks. “Have you two ever…?”

“Lord no,” Kyungsoo waves away. “He’s been my best friend for as long as I can remember. We’ve never been like that.”

“Ahh,” Jongin muses. “If you’ve tolerated him for this long he must be something special then.”

“Pfft, that’s for sure,” Kyungsoo snorts. “Honestly he’s a great guy if you’re into the whole tall, loud, and uncoordinated thing,” he says a bit more seriously, and watches as Jongin ducks his head and bites his lip.

“I might be,” Jongin admits quietly, and that’s the end of it… for now.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **edit:** before you start worrying, there will be NO love triangles in this fic! 
> 
> i debated making this chapter just a standalone side-shot, but then jongin became waaay too important to the plot. that's why this chapter is basically just one long scene and there aren't as many time jumps as the other chapters.
> 
> also, thank you all so much for your comments and kudos and support ;; it's so encouraging. i was terrified to post this fic but now i can't wait to post the end and all the side shots and asdkmfapirgn thank you thank you <3


	4. The Vague Taste of Happiness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's almost done ;__; thank you guys so much for your continuing support <3 
> 
> just in case anyone is worried, there will be no love triangles in this story! sorry if the tags and entrance of the latest character made it seem that way :x
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: mentions of marijuana use, mild sexual content

The next time the three of them are together, the flirtation between his two friends is disgustingly obvious and it’s almost sickening how hard Chanyeol is trying to be suave. Jongin’s clothes are distinctly masculine this time, but Chanyeol doesn’t seem deterred in the slightest. He gets Jongin’s number before the end of the night, and within the next few days the two of them develop into a bit of an item- a week or so later and they’re officially dating. Chanyeol is hopelessly smitten and speaks about the other a mile a minute whenever he gets the chance, and Kyungsoo notices him check his wrists more often than usual. He never mentions it, of course, but he can’t help the little pang of _something_ in his chest every time Chanyeol’s face falls when he finds his skin still blank.

There’s almost a bit of morbid curiosity every time Chanyeol looks. Neither of them know if “Jongin” is, well, _Jongin’s_ birth name; they never felt the need to ask and Jongin never made any indication of the contrary, but a prominent itch in the back of Kyungsoo’s mind wants to know if “Kim Jongin” would be the name to show up on Chanyeol’s wrist- if it would even be a name they recognize at all. It terrifies and excites Kyungsoo all at once, and it’s not lost on him that it might be a bit selfish to want Jongin and Chanyeol to be soulmates just so he can get an answer to a question he’s worried about his entire life.

The two of them are good together- don’t get him wrong. Kyungsoo has seen Chanyeol with countless girlfriends before, but none of them ever made him smile quite as bright as Jongin does, and the way Jongin talks about Chanyeol sometimes makes Kyungsoo feel the need to check his teeth for cavities.

(“Jongin…” Chanyeol had mirrored back when Kyungsoo had first told his best friend the name of the stranger he met at the club. “Tastes like… jasmine and spearmint,” he’d said- something Kyungsoo only remembers much much later that Chanyeol had once used to describe the vague taste of happiness.)

 

Before long, Chanyeol is writing song after song about everything Jongin is, melodious sonnets about everything from the sound of Jongin’s laugh to the way he flings himself off the couch when his favorite soccer team scores a goal. Kyungsoo has never seen his best friend so happy with anyone, and on most days he swears the two of them radiate sunshine when they’re together. They never make him feel like a third wheel either. If anything, he often feels like the extra person in their relationship- the last point of the triangle that makes them whole. Jongin becomes just as much of a friend as Chanyeol had ever been, and through him, Kyungsoo learns more about himself than he could have ever imagined.

Even though he can’t entirely relate, watching Jongin seamlessly shift from one presentation to the next from day to day helps Kyungsoo find confidence he never thought he could have. He tells Jongin things about his body that he just _couldn’t_ talk to anyone else about, and Jongin meets all of it with understanding groans and “oh my God I _know_ ”s that Kyungsoo can actually believe. Chanyeol had always been a great listener, but he was clueless about traditionally “female” anatomy (other than how to please it, as Jongin had so eloquently revealed one afternoon) and just why he was bothered by the things that he was. Kyungsoo was long past holding it against the older boy, but _finally_ having someone who understood and wasn’t afraid of both sides was a breath of fresh air. Plus Kyungsoo had finally found someone who knew about nearly every manhwa under the sun- not that that matters because Do Kyungsoo does _not_ read manhwa.

The three of them do nearly everything together after Chanyeol and Jongin become official- sometimes in pairs, but mostly all together, squeezing time in between class schedules, dance rehearsals, and late night performances. Kyungsoo watches his friends progress from shy to shameless, answering panicked questions about the other person in one direction or the other with a roll of his eyes and a fond smile until the other two practically blend into one person. There’s rarely a day that Kyungsoo comes to Chanyeol’s apartment and doesn’t find Jongin there, lounging on Chanyeol’s lap on the couch or nibbling on something in the kitchen (and sometimes, that nibbling is on Chanyeol too.) They don’t move in together per se- that would be too big of a step- but Jongin becomes a nearly permanent fixture in Chanyeol’s apartment, and subsequently, their lives.

Chanyeol even demands that Jongin go home with them for Chuseok one year after the youngest offhandedly mentions that he’s never “been to the motherland” before. Chanyeol is already booking their flight to Seoul before he even realizes the implications.

 

“Holy shit,” Chanyeol whispers out of nowhere. It’s a rare night Jongin isn’t with them, and he and Kyungsoo are just lounging in Chanyeol’s living room fiddling with random tasks. The cutesy little black arrow freezes over the _Book It_! button on Chanyeol’s screen as he stares at it with wide, horrified eyes and jerks his hands away to cover his mouth. “I invited Jongin to go back to Korea with me,” he says, almost in awe. “To meet my _parents._ ” His voice squeaks at the end, and Kyungsoo blinks back at him.

“Yes,” he answers slowly from his perch on the couch, “you did. Like three days ago.”

Chanyeol turns to him so fast Kyungsoo is surprised he doesn’t break his neck, arms flailing in every direction and eyes nearly popping out of his head. “I JUST INVITED MY BOYISHFRIEND TO GO BACK TO KOREA WITH ME! TO MEET MY PARENTS! FOR _CHUSEOK_!” he nearly screams, as if the volume of his voice is going to change Kyungsoo’s understanding of the words in some way. He grabs at his blond curls and pulls, air rushing into his lungs only to be expelled on another high pitched “ _holy shit.”_

Kyungsoo sighs. “Listen…” he begins. “If you’re going to have an existential crisis, could you do it in your bedroom or something? I’m trying to get homework done and I can’t focus with you flopping around like this.”

Chanyeol shouts something that is most definitely Not Words, and Kyungsoo sighs again.

“Your parents know about him, right?” Kyungsoo asks, continuing when Chanyeol frantically nods his head. “And they know about his situation and how much you care about him, right?”

Chanyeol pauses, nods again.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “Then I don’t see what the big deal is.” He tries to turn back to his homework, but he might as well have said that he’d singlehandedly murdered an orphanage full of kittens.

There’s a beat of silence before the world explodes from the couch beside him. “WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL??” Chanyeol thunders. His arms shoot up in exasperation, and Kyungsoo has to save the other’s laptop from being flung across the room. “THE BIG DEAL IS THAT I ASKED MY BOYISHFRIEND TO MEET MY _PARENTS_ KYUNGSOO!! MY PARENTS!! ON CHUSEOK!! What if I freaked him out or freak _them_ out what if I freak _myself_ out (“too late for that…” Kyungsoo mutters) what if I freak _you_ out Kyungsoo what the FUCK did I do???”

Kyungsoo moves Chanyeol’s laptop to safety with an indignant sniff and stares back at his best friend like he’s trying to explain something to a very small child. “You invited your boyishfriend to meet your parents,” he deadpans. “You just said that.”

Chanyeol whines high in the back of his throat, and Kyungsoo gives up on his homework as Chanyeol promptly curls in on himself.

“It’s going to be _fine_ ,” Kyungsoo huffs as he drops his analytical chemistry textbook to the floor with a dull thud. He offers a comforting pat to Chanyeol’s shoulder, and the older boy leans into the touch. “Your parents have known me practically my entire life and they’ve been fine- _better_ than fine- with me, so Jongin shouldn’t be any different. They’re good people Yeol. They’ll see how happy Jongin makes you and that’ll be it. They’ll be happy for you, your mom will probably plan your wedding on the spot, and everything will be fine.”

Chanyeol blushes madly at the mention of ‘wedding’ and slaps his hands over his cheeks. “Oh my God _please_ _don’t_ ,” he whimpers, but the color spreads rapidly to the tips of his ears and there’s nothing his hands can do to hide it. 

Kyungsoo tries to suppress his grin and pats his friend on the shoulder. “Everything will be fine Chanyeol,” he repeats. “You’ll be okay." 

Chanyeol doesn’t quite believe it yet, but he returns to booking the flight anyway. His fingers still hesitate over the confirmation button when it pops up on the screen, but after a deep breath and a bit of coaxing from his best friend, he clicks it with conviction and tells himself there’s no going back. He wants this. _They_ want this.

 

When the day finally comes, Chanyeol doesn’t really seem to know what the fuck he wants. The ride to the airport three weeks after buying their tickets is full of jitters and nervous laughter, Chanyeol’s voice booming louder than usual in a poor attempt to cover up his apprehension and making Kyungsoo flinch at every outburst.

To Jongin’s credit, he takes it all in stride as if it were any normal day. He’s wearing a soft graphic tee and sweats to erase the curve of his hips, his hair freshly cut and a bit of contouring on his jawline to make it stand out. Even though Jongin is going for extra casual, Kyungsoo still thinks he looks stunning. He’s admittedly a bit jealous of just how easily Jongin can pass, but he knows going through customs is going to be a bitch for both of them because of it regardless.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know what it says on Jongin’s passport, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the biggest of Jongin’s worries. The younger boy had opted to sit next to Kyungsoo in the back of the cab as they speed off to the airport, and every now and then he timidly leans into Kyungsoo’s bubble and asks a question about Chanyeol’s parents- about Korea. He hides it well, but Kyungsoo can still hear the trill of uneasiness in Jongin’s voice when he asks about the different hanboks and the way he chews on his bottom lip when he thinks no one is paying attention. He’s a bit more at ease while they’re on the plane, but by then Chanyeol is drawn tighter than a bowstring. The stewardess tells him multiple times to lower his voice when they approach the final few hours of the flight, but it’s to little use. Kyungsoo finds that punching him in the gut a few times is much more effective.

 

The bus ride into Apgujeon is significantly quieter. Reality has finally set in, and Chanyeol is practically vibrating out of his skin with it, only calming a bit when Jongin places a comforting hand on his thigh beneath the cover of his jacket. “It’ll be okay,” Jongin whispers to him, and Chanyeol flashes a nervous grin. Kyungsoo can practically taste how hard Jongin is fighting not to lean in and place a kiss to Chanyeol’s cheek, but they’re all very aware of the dangers of that here when Jongin is dressed this way. Having grown up in the States in a liberal city with understanding parents, Jongin isn’t used to hiding anything. He’d always been able to say what he wanted, dress how he wanted, _be_ who he wanted, but Apgujeon is far from Jongin’s hometown, and despite the reassurances, he’s going to be staying with two complete strangers- his boyfriend’s parents no less. Kyungsoo can’t blame him for being on edge; he certainly has enough reasons to choose from.

 

The meeting, however, goes infinitely better than any of them could have hoped for. The moment the trio walks through the front door, Chanyeol’s mother is all over them, showering her son and Kyungsoo with kisses and praises as she hugs them to death. Chanyeol towers over her now, but he automatically bends to her height and lets himself melt into her embrace with one of the brightest smile’s Kyungsoo has ever seen. Even Kyungsoo gets a few pinches to the cheek as the woman gushes about how handsome her boys have grown up to be and scolds them for not eating well enough. Kyungsoo knows enough about Chanyeol’s shitty eating habits to have her never let them leave Korea again, but he holds his tongue to spare the older woman a heart attack.

Jongin hovers off to the side all the while, shuffling his feet and chewing on his bottom lip as Chanyeol’s mother fusses and squishes. He’s sporting a slight smile, but Kyungsoo can see the uneasiness in his eyes when he manages to pop his head above Chanyeol’s arm.

Chanyeol’s mother follows his gaze not long after, and immediately drops her arms to gasp when she notices the newcomer to her home. 

“Oh my goodness you’re _beautiful_!” she gasps without thinking, faltering a bit a Jongin’s widened eyes. “Wait, can I call you beautiful? Because you are absolutely gorgeous! My son has such wonderful taste!” she rambles on as she shifts her focus to the shy brunet and coos over how cute he is.

Jongin blushes deeply in response and looks to Chanyeol for help, stuttering out a sheepish “I’m sorry. I um. Don’t actually know much Korean,” before the older woman turns to her son again.

“WHAT?” she yells at Chanyeol. “What do you mean you didn’t teach him any Korean?? Chanyeol how could you bring this poor thing here without teaching him anything??” she scolds. Chanyeol shrinks in on himself with sheepish apologies and bends away from the solid thwack to his arm. “It’s nice to meet you Jongin,” Chanyeol’s mother says as she turns back to Jongin, introducing herself the best she can in English as she ignores Chanyeol’s whining in the background.

Jongin smiles brightly at her for it, bending a bit for a hug of his own when she stretches her arms out, and whispers his thanks when she assures him that he is welcome in their home. Kyungsoo can see the tension bleed out of Jongin’s shoulders as he hugs her back, and it’s like a piece of their family has finally returned home. 

She quickly ushers them out of the doorway and into the living room where they meet Chanyeol’s father, the introduction going much the same way but with less fussing as the older man shakes Jongin’s hand. It’s like a sigh of relief coming into the house Kyungsoo spent more time in than his own, and he revels in the way his pseudo parents gush over someone else for a change, but it’s cut short when the attention is suddenly focused back on him.

“Does your mother know you’re here Kyung?” Chanyeol’s mother asks at some point, and all eyes turn to him.

Kyungsoo ducks his head to avoid their questioning eyes and Chanyeol’s look of panic, but offers a strained smile. “Ah… no,” he answers quietly. “I decided not to tell her.”

There’s only a beat of silence before Chanyeol’s mother recovers, bouncing back as if Kyungsoo had merely commented about the weather. “Ah, then I shall feed you,” she says resolutely before turning toward the kitchen. “Eat, eat!” she calls over her shoulder in English. “Hungry? I make you food, eat! Come, come.”

Jongin glances at Kyungsoo in question, but Chanyeol quickly whisks him away and launches into how his mother makes the _best_ bibimbap in the entire _universe_ , and Kyungsoo flashes him a quick smile in thanks.

 

The rest of the visit is mostly uneventful, the only major blip due to Jongin’s poor grasp of Korean and Chanyeol’s usual blundering unhelpfulness. (Jongin trying to order food with extra ‘penis’ instead of extra pepper was particularly entertaining, and the two of them are laughing too hard at the waiter’s scandalized expression to ever correct him.)

The rooming situation does get a bit awkward though; Chanyeol’s parents are conflicted about letting Jongin sleep in their son’s room, but Chanyeol desperately tries to defend his case.

“You have Kyungsoo in there too as a guarantee nothing will happen!” he protests in Korean as Jongin blinks cluelessly at his side.

Kyungsoo immediately scoffs and shakes his head. “Oh no,” he says in English. “There is no way in hell I am going to sleep on your nasty floor just so I can try to ignore you two ~subtly~ playing full-body footsie right next to me. No fucking thank you.”

Jongin’s blush rivals the deep crimson of his shirt and Chanyeol barks out adamant protests, but Kyungsoo doesn’t budge. He winds up with Jongin in the guest room when all is said and done (no thanks to Chanyeol nearly blabbing about Kyungsoo’s own sexual history with Jongin in his desperation), but Jongin doesn’t complain. The three of them are plenty used to spending entire days together, and if Jongin disappears for a couple of hours one night, Kyungsoo doesn’t say anything about it.

 

Despite being gone for a few years, Kyungsoo still wakes up early enough to have coffee with Chanyeol’s parents before they go to work, and some mornings it feels like he never left. They ask about Kyungsoo’s studies and how well Chanyeol is taking care of himself, but nothing too heavy ever really comes up. Only one morning strays from casual pleasantries, but it’s so brief, Kyungsoo nearly misses it.

“Chanyeol seems happy,” his father comments over breakfast. Chanyeol’s mother had gone to their family-owned restaurant a bit early that morning, but there are still a few more minutes before he has to go to the office for the day, and Chanyeol and Jongin are still asleep.

Kyungsoo idly sips his coffee and nods. “He is,” Kyungsoo answers, and the man offers a gentle smile. The two of them drink their coffee mostly in silence, the morning news droning on in the background from a TV that neither of them are watching. It’s nice- familiar. 

“What about you Kyungsoo?” he asks after Kyungsoo has long since reached the bottom of his cup, and Kyungsoo has to search his brain a bit to figure out exactly what it is that Chanyeol’s father is asking.

It’s not something that Kyungsoo had really thought of much: his own happiness. Between school and studying and friends and his failed love life, there wasn’t much time to think of anything else. Chanyeol had told him once what happiness tasted like, but Kyungsoo can’t recall ever truly knowing for himself. 

He stares at the thin line of brown still lingering in the bottom of his coffee cup, the last few drops of coffee he can never quite seem to get to taunting him from the edges, and takes a deep breath before answering.

“I’m still working on it,” he says, and they leave it at that.

\--

Despite enjoying the familiarity of Korea, Kyungsoo is more than happy to come back to the States at the end of the week. Jongin had had a mandatory dress rehearsal for their upcoming show, so almost too soon after they’d left, Kyungsoo finds himself back in his apartment curled up under his blankets with his favorite volume of Prince of Tennis that somehow magically just _appeared_ in his sock drawer. There’s more freedom to be himself here in the States, so far away from rigid customs and fear of running in to someone from his past every time he turns a corner. Plus, it’s nice to be able to escape to his own bedroom and not have to put up with his best friends making googely eyes at each other 24/7. It was cute, Kyungsoo has to admit, but it seemed to amplify the longer they stayed, and he was more than happy to leave his friends to their own devices once they got home.

It’s like a flip has switched in Jongin though; the dancer had always been rather open with them before, but after their return, it’s like Jongin can’t help involving them in anything and everything about his life. He finally invites the two of them to a dance recital he has scheduled at the end of the month during the plane ride home- something the youngest had avoided up to this point out of nerves- and Kyungsoo had been nearly certain that they’d be tackled by an air marshal at Chanyeol’s ecstatic shriek of agreement. Chanyeol shrinks in on himself at the flight attendant’s stern warning, thoroughly chastised but still buzzing with excitement and wiggling in his seat like a child as he asks Jongin a slew of whispered questions.

Jongin flushes a deep shade of red and stuttered out most of their answers, but nobody could miss the way they their hand rests securely in Chanyeol’s between their seats for the rest of the flight.

When they land, Jongin offers their friends a night out completely on them- a consolation of sorts for not inviting them to a recital earlier. “You’ll get to see me dance a little and I’ll buy all the drinks you want,” Jongin says on the cab ride back to their apartment, putting on their best puppy eyes when Kyungsoo looks like he might refuse. “Think of it as a treat and a preview!”

“Fine…” Kyungsoo finally relents just before Jongin gets out of the cab, and the younger throws their backpack in the air in victory.

“You won’t regret it! I promise!” Jongin calls over their shoulder, and Kyungsoo merely rolls his eyes.

“Yeah sure, whatever,” he mutters, ignoring the insistent finger poking into his ribs as Chanyeol wiggles in glee beside him.

\--

Kyungsoo soon learns that watching Jongin dance at the club is _nothing_ like watching him dance on stage. Both are captivating, but clubbing Jongin’s body moves like liquid sin on the dance floor, as if sculpted by Aphrodite herself to entice and seduce anyone lucky enough to see it. In the theatre, it’s a different experience entirely.

Jongin paints poetry on stage with their body during their recital- a wild, intricate calligraphy that spirals and curls across the polished wood as they flow from one step to the next, and it has Kyungsoo utterly transfixed from the moment they start. Beside him, Chanyeol is doing no better. Kyungsoo isn’t entirely sure his best friend is even _breathing_ throughout the entire performance, but once the music ends and the spotlight is turned off, Chanyeol is the first to his feet to scream his praises at the top of his lungs. It would be impossible for Jongin not to hear him despite the roar of the audience, and even Kyungsoo throws in a few whoops of his own just to keep up.

Jongin had always claimed to be too shy to dance in front of them before, their cheeks coloring and voice stuttering as they declined every request to show off a bit, but after seeing them on stage… Kyungsoo couldn’t imagine that the dancer has ever been shy in their life.

He’s quickly reminded though when the two of them meet Jongin backstage after the performance. The sheen of sweat clinging to Jongin’s skin shines with the overhead lights and sparkles as they bow to everyone in the vicinity and the crew scurries to pack up their equipment. As soon as Jongin spots them, the dancer rushes over and stops just short of launching themself into Chanyeol’s arms, shuffling their feet a few steps in front of him and flashing a meek smile instead.

“So… what did you think?” Jongin asks softly as they wipe some stray glitter off their costume and look up at Chanyeol through their lashes. There’s only vague whispers of the poised, confident dancer they saw on stage just _minutes_ before- of the person Kyungsoo met at the club that night so long ago- and Kyungsoo just can’t quite wrap his mind around how the person who flashed smirks at the crowd and threw themselves into every move could suddenly not even stand straight or look their friends in the eye.

Chanyeol however, barely seems to notice the change. His booming voice and excited squeals ricochet around the metal beams crisscrossing over their heads, and he wraps practically his entire body around Jongin to shake them back and forth.

“Are you kidding me that was AMAZING JONGIN HOLY SHIT HOW COULD YOU _KEEP_ THIS FROM US YOU’RE INCREDIBLE!!” he shouts, and Jongin laughs helplessly in his embrace, blush covered by stage makeup but shining bright and clear on the tips of their ears.

Kyungsoo’s heart sputters violently in his chest as Chanyeol yanks Jongin in for a kiss neither of them are quite prepared for, and when he lets go, Jongin isn’t the only one that looks a little dazed. They’ve kissed before- Kyungsoo has _seen_ them do it (among other things) but this… The two of them just look so deliriously happy and in love that Kyungsoo has to take a minute to catch his breath.

He spares a glance at his friends’ wrists, masochistically hoping that he sees flashes of red where their arms are still tangled together, but there’s nothing besides pale skin and glitter.

\--

There’s only one other person besides Chanyeol that Kyungsoo tells his soulmate woes to. His name is Kim Minseok and they meet on a trip organized by a friend of a friend that Kyungsoo doesn’t even know that well. It almost doesn’t happen at all, but some strange niggle in the back of Kyungsoo’s mind had told him to finally give in to Chanyeol’s twenty minutes of pleading to go on road trip to the river with them. It was a rare weekend free of exams, and all Kyungsoo had really wanted to do was curl up in bed and avoid daylight (and not read manhwa), but something about Chanyeol’s ugly, desperate pout and Jongin’s silent eagerness had finally gotten to him. The youngest had stayed back at Kyungsoo’s apartment and made triple sure that he _actually_ wanted to go and wasn’t just agreeing to shut Chanyeol up, but Kyungsoo quickly found that his nod of assent was all his own.

 

They meet up with him and a few other people Kyungsoo doesn’t know the names of, but Minseok stands out more than any of them. The Ph.D. student is covered quite literally from head to toe in water resistant polyester and spandex well after everyone else had shed their clothes, and between his own swimshirt and Jongin’s bright red bikini top, Kyungsoo isn’t quite sure what to think of it. The sleeves of Minseok’s light grey swimshirt end in black fingerless gloves encircling his wrists, and matching grey tights peek out from the bottom of his bathing suit to stretch all the way down to his ankles. Not a single piece of it comes off even as Minseok dives into the river with the rest of them, and it both makes Kyungsoo feel safer about his own modest attire and piques his curiosity when none of their friends mention his clothing or try to pull at it as they manhandle him in a fierce underwater wrestling match.

Kyungsoo just watches Minseok from a distance for most of the day, still highly uncomfortable being around so many people he doesn’t know when his clothes are soaking wet, and he doesn’t speak to him much until they’re walking up to the riverhead to rent tubes and float down.

Minseok falls into step beside Kyungsoo when the latter decides to lag behind the group a bit and give himself some space. He’s already drained from socializing for the majority of the day, and he figures that Chanyeol and Jongin deserve some time to mingle without having a clingy, antisocial shadow hovering at their sides.

Minseok walks beside him quietly, nothing but the thunk thunk thunk of rubber tubes hitting their ankles accenting the distant conversation ahead of them as they make their way up the trail. Minseok doesn’t bother much with small talk, but one comment about how shocked he is that Chanyeol and Jongdae haven’t talked everyone else’s ears off has Kyungsoo absolutely smitten. His voice is soft and sweet when he slips into fluent Korean, and it’s such a contrast to the others’ boisterous English that Kyungsoo nearly sighs in relief at the sound. He decides rather quickly that he doesn’t mind talking to Minseok. The other boy’s gentle voice and use of the familiar language casts a security blanket around Kyungsoo’s shoulders that has him feeling warm and content as they talk about this and that, bonding over their shared science majors and cringing at their other friends’ ridiculous antics.

Kyungsoo barely even notices Chanyeol looking back at them over his shoulder every so often, sometimes with a playful glint in his eye and a poorly concealed grin on his lips, other times just intently watching them with an unreadable expression. More than once, Kyungsoo catches Jongin watching them too, but he’s entirely distracted again when Minseok laughs and his lips curve up into an uneven, gummy smile. How could he possibly pay attention to his friends when he’s trying to calm his fluttering heart and not obsessively check his wrists?

The day ends with Kyungsoo’s number carefully typed into Minseok’s phone and a text from an unknown number waiting in his inbox, giddy bubbles fluttering in his chest and a chorus of wolf whistles attacking him from all sides as Kyungsoo slips into the back of Yixing’s car. He punches all of them in the gut at least once (except Yixing, of course, because who could ever hurt Yixing?) and glares at all of them in turn. The outward disdain, however, does nothing to calm the butterflies in his stomach or the blush creeping across his cheeks for the entire drive home.

 

They text each other almost right away, Minseok checking that Kyungsoo got home okay and wishing him luck on his upcoming research proposal, and Kyungsoo has to stop himself from wiggling right off the bed in excitement when he gets a “want to get dinner after lab some time this week?” and a line of cute emojis.

Minseok’s arms are covered in a sharp black dress shirt that’s tucked into matching grey pants when he comes to pick Kyungsoo up, his fingerless leather gloves still covering most of his hands as he holds his car door open for Kyungsoo to hop in. There’s a soft ring of kohl lining his eyes too, and his hair is pushed off his forehead in an expertly sculpted curve Kyungsoo aches to run his fingers though. He’s fucking _hot_ even completely covered up like this, and Kyungsoo feels a stab of want punching through his system. It doesn’t help that Minseok’s smile is so so bright- infectious enough that Kyungsoo’s lips pull up into a smile of his own even as his legs turn to jelly beneath him. 

The restaurant they’d agreed on is a wash, closed early for the night for a staff meeting, so they head back to Kyungsoo’s apartment with takeout and shitty movies to watch instead, their crazed laughter dissolving into languid kisses as they curl up on the couch and very very closely pay attention to the TV. Minseok’s hands stay rooted in safe territory, but Kyungsoo can’t help thinking of what Jongdae had slipped into the endless slew of teasing his friends had subjected him to on their drive back from the river.

 _“Minseok will dick you down good Kyungsoo,”_ Jongdae had said. _“I may be straight as a pole, but Minseok sure as hell isn’t, and I’ve heard from some of his exes that he’s a fucking animal.”_ Jongin had done Kyungsoo the favor of decking Jongdae in the arm for it, but Kyungsoo hadn’t quite been able to let the comment go.

Kyungsoo may not exactly be a virgin anymore, but the last person he’d slept with had been Jongin, and he’s a bit desperate to replace the memory of sleeping with his best friend’s now-boyishfriend with someone else. Jongdae’s comment had been unnecessary, but Kyungsoo can’t deny that it had made him a bit… curious.

He keeps his own hands in neutral territory to match Minseok’s pace, but he lets his hips drag extra slow against Minseok’s thigh as he adjusts their position mid-kiss, reveling in the way Minseok’s breath stutters against his lips and his fingers dig into Kyungsoo’s shoulder just that tiny bit more. His hands are small, but Kyungsoo can feel the power behind them as he holds Kyungsoo against him, and _fuck_ Kyungsoo wants, but Minseok’s resolve holds strong through all of Kyungsoo’s subtle invitations. His touch never strays from Kyungsoo’s waist and arms despite the younger boy being able to feel how worked up Minseok is- and _boy_ is it impressive- through Minseok’s nice dress slacks. It’s frustrating as all hell in the moment. He can see it on Minseok’s face too as they finally draw away from each other for air, but Minseok just rubs the pad of his thumb over Kyungsoo’s swollen bottom lip and presses a gentle kiss to his cheek in parting when he leaves for the night.

It’s only after Kyungsoo is in the safety of his own bedroom that he realizes how grateful he is for Minseok’s restraint. He’s _never_ been like this with a guy before, and it finally occurs to him that it’s only their first date. They haven’t talked about much of anything besides their research and friends and other little things here and there, nothing that they need to talk about before they take that step. Jongin had been an incredibly risky and (miraculously) very lucky break that night- more than enough to expend the entirety of his luck reserves for the rest of his life.

He has Minseok's promise of a second date and perfectly functional fingers to get him through the night though, and Kyungsoo feels much lighter than he thought he would by the time he relays the details to Jongin and Chanyeol the next day.

 

“Jongdae’s such a shithead,” Jongin scoffs as he whizzes past Kyungsoo’s character in Mario Kart and takes out Chanyeol’s with a perfectly aimed green shell. Kyungsoo had resigned himself to the fact that he’s never going beat Jongin at racing games a long time ago, so he’s realistically only trying to beat Chanyeol (which is hardly a difficult task). His aforementioned best friend, however, wails like he’s dying.

With his character pausing to recover from exploding off the side of the track, Chanyeol takes the opportunity to offer his two cents. “Yeah, Minseok is a great guy,” he says bitterly as he scrunches his face and slams his finger on the accelerator button like his life depends on it. “I don’t know why he decided to tell you that of all things.”

Jongin shrugs and inches closer and closer to the screen as he reaches the home stretch. “I’m pretty sure he and Sehun were the main reasons the cooler was so much lighter when we were packing up,” he offers as he speeds across the finish line and whoops in victory. Chanyeol flings himself right back off the track without any help from his boyishfriend at all.

Kyungsoo comes in a complacent third place and puts his controller down with a sigh, his legs stretching out across Jongin’s lap in the process just because he can. “I mean it’s not like I don’t want to sleep with him,” Kyungsoo muses, shoving Chanyeol’s head away when the eldest whines and tries to join in on his and Jongin’s pile. “No. You’re too heavy and I’m cuddling with Jongin right now,” he deadpans, and Kyungsoo doesn’t think he’s _ever_ seen Chanyeol look as betrayed as he does when Jongin giggles. “How do you guys know Minseok anyway?” he asks instead. “I’m practically always with you two and I’ve never seen him before.”

“He dances with Yixing and stops by every now and then to smoke,” Chanyeol says with a vague wave of his hand. He rolls to Jongin’s other side and flops down, humming in content when Jongin indulgently runs gentle fingers through his hair.

“More like Minseok takes a couple hits and hangs around to clean your apartment,” Jongin corrects as he uses his free hand to stroke Kyungsoo’s hair too. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him get high when he’s here.”

Chanyeol opens his mouth to say something, but cuts himself off before it gets out. “Yeah,” he mutters instead, pushing his face further into Jongin’s neck and placing a gentle kiss against his boyishfriend’s skin. Kyungsoo snorts and has the sudden urge to check his teeth for cavities.

“No wonder your apartment isn’t a complete shithole all the time,” Kyungsoo muses. “It sure as hell isn’t you two or Yixing, and I’m not entirely convinced your third roommate even exists.”

“Hey!” Chanyeol and Jongin squawk together, Jongin’s soft tenor harmonizing with Chanyeol’s low low baritone for one beautiful chord as they voice their displeasure.

“He does too exist!” Chanyeol protests, ignoring Kyungsoo’s point entirely, but it’s Jongin that flattens him with a look of disbelief.

“You’ve been living here for almost three years Chanyeol,” he says. “Have you literally _ever_ seen him?”

“Well, no, but Yixing-”

“Exactly,” Jongin says before muffling his boyfriend’s protests with a proper kiss, and this time Kyungsoo actually does get up to check his teeth in the bathroom mirror. His phone sits heavy in his pocket as he breaks away from the couple, and the sudden urge to call Minseok is so strong his fingers twitch with it. Later, he tells himself. _Later_.

 

Kyungsoo doesn’t have to wait very long for their next date, though. This time they make sure that the restaurant will actually be open before they take off for the night, but Kyungsoo assures the older boy that he really did enjoy their last date- preferred it even- and if Kyungsoo could see through Minseok’s turtleneck sweater, he’d see that Minseok was blushing all the way down to his toes.

Their dates almost always end at one of their apartments after that anyway, with the two of them sprawled out on one couch or the other as their hands tangle in each other’s hair and their lips fight for dominance. Minseok’s hands still never stray beyond Kyungsoo’s waist though, no matter how many times Kyungsoo “accidentally” lets his shirt ride up a little higher or groans his want into Minseok’s mouth. The older boy never seems adverse or uncomfortable with the advancements- quite the opposite, if Kyungsoo is reading it right. It’s as frustrating as it is endearing, and after almost two months of nothing, tendrils of anxiety begin to prickle beneath Kyungsoo’s skin every time Minseok pulls away.

As they spend another lazy Saturday in Minseok’s living room, Kyungsoo can’t help thinking back to what Jongdae had said back at the river; if Minseok is such an animal, why doesn’t he just _do_ something already?

He pulls away from Minseok slowly as they part to breathe, his head tilting to blaze a trail of sloppy kisses across Minseok’s jawline and down to his neck. He only stops when his lips meet the hem of Minseok’s ever-present high collar, and the older boy’s entire body instantly tenses up.

“You okay?” Kyungsoo breathes against the uncovered skin- much safer territory- and Minseok shudders like his soul is trying to escape his body. “Minseok?”

“No- I- I think maybe we should stop,” Minseok gasps out, and Kyungsoo immediately pulls away.

“Okay,” Kyungsoo relents softly as he drops his hands and flops over to snuggle into Minseok’s side instead. The older boy relaxes a bit more with the distance, but the tension in his body doesn’t quite leave.

“I’m sorry Kyungsoo,” he blurts out just as Kyungsoo tries to put more distance between them, and the older boy reaches to lace their fingers together. “I really really want to, I just- I-”

“It’s okay,” Kyungsoo interrupts gently when Minseok can’t quite seem to find the words to continue. He rests their intertwined hands safely on his lower thigh and presses a kiss to Minseok’s clothed shoulder. “You don’t have to explain if you don’t want to. This is enough.”

Minseok lets out a deep breath, one that finally had his shoulders relaxing as he whispers a barely audible “thank you” and curls back into Kyungsoo’s embrace. The look in Minseok’s eyes when Kyungsoo glances back down at him has Kyungsoo fighting every fiber of his being not to check his wrist for a name.

\--

“Still nothing?” Jongin asks a few days later as he stabs a straw into his bright pink frappuccino and takes a long, satisfying sip.

Kyungsoo swirls his own coffee and shakes his head. “Nope,” he deadpans just as Chanyeol crashes into the seat beside him and starts dumping an ungodly amount of sugar into his cup. “You disgust me…” he mutters with a cringe, but Chanyeol merely flashes him a grin and keeps going.

“I told you Jongdae was a shithead,” Jongin pipes back in, and somehow in the .45 seconds that Kyungsoo looked away from him, Jongin had managed to get a dollop of whip cream on the tip of his nose. Kyungsoo rubs his own nose in hopes that the younger boy would mirror his action, but Jongin cocks his head and wipes his cheek instead. Kyungsoo sighs.

“I don’t know…” Kyungsoo laments. “I’m not really upset about it or anything. I’m just… I think Jongdae might have been on to something.”

“What do you mean?” Chanyeol asks, taking a sip of his drink before grimacing unnecessarily hard and adding even _more_ sugar to it. Kyungsoo says a silent prayer for Chanyeol’s kidneys and a second one for Jongin’s sanity.

It’s not something that Kyungsoo had originally worried about, but the longer Minseok keeps his hands off him, the more the other part of Jongdae’s statement stands out. Jongdae had probably meant it as merely an accent to his point, Kyungsoo is sure, but that hasn’t stopped his insecurity from dissecting it and churning out possibilities. “He basically said Minseok is gay as fuck,” Kyungsoo begins slowly, pausing for a moment to gather himself when his best friends give him blank stares in return. He makes a brief sweep of his hand over his body and flicks the edge of his binder for emphasis, the edge of it just barely visible under the thick cotton of his t-shirt. “Maybe he doesn’t want to ruin the illusion if we go too far."

A flood of sugar crystals explodes across the table almost as soon as the words are out of Kyungsoo’s mouth, and when he looks up there’s a multitude of ripped white packages clenched tightly in Chanyeol’s fingers. Even Jongin jumps a bit as the grains splash against his arm, but Chanyeol’s eyes are hard as they turn to stare at him.

“It’s not like that,” the eldest says sharply, his lips pressed tightly together as he focuses intently on the table. “There is no illusion to ruin.”

Kyungsoo almost fires back at him, but Jongin beats him to it. “No, there isn’t any illusion,” he agrees softly, “but Kyungsoo has every reason to worry that Minseok might think there is.” Jongin sits up straight in his chair and swirls his straw through the puff of whipped cream perched atop his pink monstrosity of a drink like he’s trying to drown it. “I know you’re well intended and all, but it’s a bit different for Kyungsoo and me. There’s no consequences for you if you’re wrong.”

Chanyeol’s gaze immediately flicks up and bounces between the two across from him helplessly, his mouth gaping open as he flails. “No, I- I know that!” he blurts out, his voice quieting when several patrons turn to glare at him. “I know that,” he tries again, this time more quietly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like- it’s just. It’s not like that, I swear,” Chanyeol flounders. He scrambles to collect the sugar crystals still littering the table as he heaves a frustrated sigh and taps his feet. “I know it’s different for you two, but Minseok isn’t- He’s not doing it because of that,” he finally gets out. His broad hands sweep the last of the crystals into his palms much more gently as the gears in his head spin into overdrive. “I’m not going to tell you what it is if he hasn’t already shown you, but just… trust me on this one? Minseok really likes you Kyungsoo. All of you. I promise it’s not about that.”

The younger boy remains skeptical, but Chanyeol’s words do bring a sliver of comfort. Even Jongin lets it go after a hard look at Chanyeol’s face, and soon he’s back to gulping down his Frappuccino as if nothing had ever happened. He hums in content and wiggles his nose, the bright blob of whipped cream moving with it before Chanyeol finally leans in to kiss it off.

Kyungsoo fakes a gag, but the action only spurs Jongin to lean over and give Chanyeol a proper kiss, his smile glowing bright enough to rival the lights shining down on them as Chanyeol grins back. Despite only being a spectator to their kiss, the gesture is surprisingly comforting. Kyungsoo still fakes another gag though, just to keep up appearances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \o/ so minseok was a last-minute addition, but i think his story is very important for world-building and showing that kyungsoo does date other people lol. i have a much more detailed version of their relationship (the river scene, first date, so on), so if anyone is interested i may post the extended version as a side shot or something. there's still the most important part of minseok's part in the next chapter though!


	5. Somehow... It'll All Be Okay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **IF YOU HAVE NOT READ[EDGES](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7905001) YET:** i recommend that you treat Edges as the "last chapter" or else the last paragraph will be the worst ending ever
> 
> IF YOU HAVE READ EDGES: feel free to go read it again and make the ending cuter :3c
> 
>  
> 
>  **WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER:** implied sex, description of past major injury (burns), marijuana use

Kyungsoo does still think about it afterwards, of course. Chanyeol had said to trust him and he does- his best friend has never led him astray before- but it doesn’t entirely stop the sparks of anxiety from making their appearance every time Minseok leaves Kyungsoo desperate and aching for him at the end of the night. Patience had always been one of Kyungsoo’s strong suits, but he’s nearly at his wits end when he finally gets an answer.

 

It’s an unsuspecting Thursday night, calm and lazy and exactly what Kyungsoo needs after a long week of thesis revisions as he and Minseok make an easy dinner in the older boy’s kitchen.

Minseok had just finished his own research presentation earlier that week, but as the night wears on, Kyungsoo feels the tension building up in Minseok’s body with each passing second. The way he fidgets with the ends of his gloves and tugs at the collar of his shirt betrays the calm mask he wears over his face, and by the time they finish washing and putting away the dishes, Kyungsoo is genuinely worried.

“Minseok hyung,” he starts slowly as he puts the last dish on the dry rack and turns to face him. “Is everything okay?”

The older boy puts his own plate down with a soft clack and closes his eyes. “Yeah,” he breathes out. “Everything’s fine.”

It’s obviously not, but Kyungsoo doesn’t want to push. And yet, he doesn’t particularly want to let it go either. He slides his hand over Minseok’s slowly, giving the other plenty of time to pull away as he goes, and is pleasantly surprised when Minseok laces their fingers together instead.

He tightens his hold as he opens his mouth to speak, and Kyungsoo can feel the way his hands tremble as Minseok finally looks him in the eye. “Can we talk for a minute? Back in my room?” he asks softly, and Kyungsoo nods right away.

“Yeah, of course,” he agrees, and despite the alarm bells screaming in Kyungsoo’s head, he lets Minseok lead him into his bedroom and close the door.

They’re the only two people in Minseok’s apartment, but the older boy seems to relax a bit once the door is closed, and he leads Kyungsoo to sit on his bed with his lip caught between his teeth. Minseok remains standing though, and Kyungsoo only grows more confused as the other turns to face him and slowly starts undoing the buttons of his shirt.

“When I was in my freshman year…” Minseok begins with a deep, shuddering breath, “I had a really shitty lab partner in chemistry.” He stops at the last button of his shirt and leaves the fabric hanging, the gap in the material only showcasing a thin white turtleneck underneath. “We were… doing some experiment- I don’t even remember what it was now, but he was in charge of heating everything up while I did all the mixing. I guess he didn’t realize that we were using new glassware so he… accidentally [superheated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superheating) our nitric acid when it didn’t boil.” Minseok pauses to take another breath and his eyes slip closed. Trembling fingers undo the fastens of his gloves and gingerly work up underneath them, gradually peeling away the soft leather as he continues.

“He kept turning the heat up higher and higher until he asked me to check on it because it wasn’t working. I didn’t know what he’d done, so when I picked up the flask it just… exploded. All over me.” Minseok’s voice catches painfully on his words, but his face remains carefully blank. Only the glassy redness in his eyes gives anything away as he pulls the gloves off his hands and slides the shirt from his shoulders. The undershirt goes too, and it takes every ounce of strength Kyungsoo has not to burst into tears.

Spider webs of glossy pink skin paint their way from Minseok's palms all the way up to his shoulders, blotches of it littering his chest and dancing around little white lines as he bares everything for Kyungsoo to see. His entire body is shaking, and it bleeds into his voice as he starts speaking again. “Some of the glass stuck in me too, but all I could feel was the acid just… _burning_ everywhere. I was screaming and my lab partner tried to help, but he- he panicked and threw water on me and made everything worse.” Minseok wipes at his eyes and sniffs, drawing in a shuddering breath as Kyungsoo fights not to stand up and comfort him- not yet.

“There was already a lot of nerve damage by the time I got to the hospital, and some days it hurts like _hell._ I go to Yixing because I- it’s usually bearable, but sometimes I can’t even think straight because it hurts so much. Like needles stabbing me over and over again while someone scratches steel wool over where the burns used to be. The doctors said the pain might never really go away and. Smoking makes it stop for a while. It makes me forget how bad it hurts.” Minseok’s scarred hands trail up over his arms and trace the patches strewn across his chest, one hand slipping up to the base of his neck and the other down to where the scars disappear beneath the waistband of his jeans. The gesture isn’t to hide anything from sight, but almost as if he’s commit their pattern to memory all over again. “It’s so strange,” Minseok whispers. “Some of this skin isn’t even mine.”

And finally, some of the pieces start falling into place. Kyungsoo doesn’t know what compels him to do it, but he rises slowly off of the bed and reaches out towards the other, fingers dangling limp as if to not get too close. “Does it hurt now?” he asks, and Minseok shakes his head.

“I was at Yixing’s earlier today,” he answers. “I wanted to be ready for… for this.”

Minseok won’t meet his eyes until they are only inches apart, and once he does, Kyungsoo can see the pain shining in them through a haze of red- can see the fear and uncertainty he knows all too well. “Kyungsoo I… The skin on my wrists…” Minseok breathes like a prayer. “It isn’t mine.”

The last piece falls.

Minseok doesn’t flinch when Kyungsoo reaches out to touch- doesn’t wince away when Kyungsoo slides his fingers across Minseok’s collarbones or up the lines painting his neck. He shudders, but doesn’t move to stop it. His chest heaves beneath Kyungsoo’s ministrations, his downcast eyes following Kyungsoo’s hands as he traces the outline of every starburst and breath catching at every pause.

It’s almost unreal feeling the sudden slickness as Kyungsoo slides his fingers from normal skin to scar, stumbling over the rise and fall of every sharp white line. Before Kyungsoo even knows what’s happening, there’s a shudder in his own breath too, and there’s just so so _much_ to feel. He understands the shame- the hiding. Everything. His hands skate across Minseok's shoulders and ghost down his biceps, out to his hands and caresses his wrists. He understands. And he doesn’t want Minseok to hide from him ever again.

“I’ve always been so afraid that it might not be _my_ soulmate’s name that shows up when I find them,” Minseok continues as Kyungsoo’s hands slide down his arms, shivering violently when Kyungsoo reaches his wrists. “I don’t even know if… if anything will show up at all. I’m scared that the people I date will run as soon as they know their name might never be there. A lot of them did.”

Kyungsoo’s heart throbs painfully, and he wants more than anything to kiss all of Minseok’s worries away. He knows all too well the crushing fear of being rejected as soon as his clothes come off- as soon as the person realizes that he’s not what they thought they signed up for. “I’m glad you showed me,” Kyungsoo whispers as he spreads his hands out across Minseok’s palms. He laces their fingers together, and suddenly they’re so close the words are practically breathed against Minseok’s lips. “I’m glad you trusted me enough.”

And Kyungsoo wants to know, so so badly, what that trust tastes like. He waits for Minseok to make the first move, and his eyes flutter shut when Minseok leans in to seal their lips together, kissing him slow enough Kyungsoo feels like he’s burning. Their fingers stay tightly linked together, but Minseok’s moves them to sit low on Kyungsoo’s hips, drawing their bodies closer together as Kyungsoo gasps into it.

Kyungsoo is so caught up he almost never wants it to stop, but the voice in the back of his head whispers that there’s more- there’s something else he has to do before they can go any further. “Minseok wait-” he gasps as he breaks the kiss and bows his head to breathe through the sudden tidal wave of emotions. From up this close, Kyungsoo can see every ounce of dread reflecting in Minseok’s eyes when he pulls away, and he hates himself for being the cause of it. “I want you to see me too,” Kyungsoo says as he presses their lips back together, his hand tight on the back of Minseok’s neck in reassurance. “I want this- I still want _you_ , but… before we do anything else, I want to show you too.”

And Kyungsoo _knows_ Minseok has already figured out what he wants to show him- probably had the first time they met- but it suddenly feels overwhelmingly important to show Minseok on his own, to shed every layer one by one until there’s nothing left to hide.

Relief blooms across Minseok’s face and his hands squeeze Kyungsoo’s tighter where they rest against his hips. “Okay,” he whispers, and then he lets go.

Kyungsoo’s clothes come off piece by piece just as Minseok’s had, his fingers trembling as he peels his shirt off and slips the binder over his head. He pops the elastic against his skin twice before it’s all said and done and his fingers slip over the buttons, but Minseok doesn’t make any move to help him, just keeps his hands patiently at his sides until Kyungsoo is finished.

He sucks in a deep breath when his pants fall to the floor, and finally looks back up to meet Minseok’s eyes. “I’m afraid of that too,” he admits, “that people will run once they see everything. I’m afraid that even when I do find my soulmate, the name they see won’t be mine.”

He doesn’t notice the tears falling from his eyes until Minseok’s thumbs reach up to wipe them away. There’s a wobbly smile on Minseok’s face and tears shining in his own eyes as he looks down at Kyungsoo with so much adoration he doesn’t even know what to do with it. “I’m glad you showed me,” Minseok mirrors, and slowly slowly _slowly_ presses their lips back together. His lips are so gentle as they claim Kyungsoo’s own, brushing against them like they might break if he pushes too far. And Kyungsoo appreciates the effort, smiling into the soft press of Minseok’s mouth until his head stops reeling and knees stop shaking enough for him to want more.

Minseok’s hands stay rooted in familiar territory until Kyungsoo breathes near-silent permission against his neck, nibbling on a spot just above his collarbone and gasping out a desperate “ _please_ ” before Minseok lets his palms float over the bare skin of Kyungsoo’s back and rest on the younger boy’s hips. He saves Kyungsoo’s chest for last, whispering out a soft “can I?” before kneading them in his hands and making Kyungsoo shiver violently.

They fall back against Minseok’s bed almost naturally when their knees get too weak to support them, and Minseok’s solid weight on top of him makes Kyungsoo feel safe and warm despite being so _so_ exposed. They both still have their boxers on, but they don’t stay for long, patient hands gradually peeling them off until there’s nothing but skin against naked skin. 

The sex is more exploration than anything else- almost like an afterthought to devouring everything the other has to offer. Minseok is hard against Kyungsoo’s thigh, but doesn’t rut against him, doesn’t seek friction as he maps out every dip and curve of Kyungsoo’s body and Kyungsoo does the same. They pant into each other’s mouths in the brief moments they come up for air, and Minseok worships Kyungsoo’s body with his tongue until the younger can’t take it anymore.

Minseok asks for whispered permission before every move, asks which way Kyungsoo wants it and builds up slow even when Kyungsoo is begging for it. There are no scars on Minseok’s back for Kyungsoo to be mindful of, so he digs his nails in hard just to show Minseok how much he loves it, how fucking _good_ Minseok is making him feel with every thrust. He stays suspended in a state of euphoria the whole time- his emotions scraped as raw as the skin beneath his fingers as his body and mind alight with sensation. When he comes, he sees stars and fireworks and _Minseok Minseok Minseok_ until Minseok groans low against his lips and joins him over the edge. 

Minseok lowers his weight slowly on top of Kyungsoo’s body, his chest heaving in counterpoint to Kyungsoo’s own, and the younger doesn’t think he’s _ever_ felt so exhausted after sex before. He shudders when Minseok pulls out, tying off the condom and throwing it away before settling onto the bed beside him. The fraction of a second without Minseok’s warmth feels like an eternity until Minseok pulls him back into his arms, snuggling close and peppering little kisses all over his cheeks. Every nerve is still buzzing as they come down from their high, the sparks settling into a pleasant simmer just beneath Kyungsoo’s skin as he settles into the sheets. 

His brain feels like mush, but there’s _so_ _much_ trying to pass through it all at once. He rolls onto his side to stare at Minseok’s face, committing every sharp plane and rounded edge to memory as he watches the rise and fall of Minseok’s chest get progressively slower. The older boy’s eyes are half closed but clear as they stare right back, little cogs working behind the deep mahogany as a tiny smile plays at the corner of his lips.

“You know, it’d be perfect if we were soulmates,” Kyungsoo muses out loud, his mouth snapping shut as soon as he realizes what he’s said. Minseok pulls back a bit, but his expression is merely attentive, if not a little shocked. “I just mean it’d be nice. Of the universe,” Kyungsoo amends quickly. “If my name never shows up on you, I’ll never have to worry about whether it’s the wrong one or not, and I wouldn’t mind it not being there. I just think it would be nice.”

“Ahh.” Minseok hums, a wry smile turning up his mouth as he turns to stare at the ceiling. “The universe is neither kind nor cruel,” he says softly. “It just is.”

The words weigh heavy on Kyungsoo’s shoulders, and he finds himself unable to say anything in return. They fall into silence, and Kyungsoo wonders ever so briefly if Minseok has already fallen asleep, lulled almost into slumber himself by Minseok’s even breath, but when he cracks his eyes open to check, Minseok is looking down at him with so much affection he almost stops breathing altogether.

“I don’t know if we’re going to end up soulmates or not,” Minseok says softly as he pulls Kyungsoo back to his chest and tucks him under his chin, “but it’s going to be one hell of a good ride either way.”

Kyungsoo bursts out laughing before he can stop himself and grins up at his boyfriend with stars in his eyes. “Yeah,” he agrees, “I can get on board with that.”

Minseok pets his fingers through Kyungsoo’s hair as he waits for the younger boy to sober, his nails dragging lightly as he searches Kyungsoo’s face for something Kyungsoo isn’t sure he’ll find. “I dated this guy not long after the accident,” he says once Kyungsoo has calmed back down a bit, his fingers not losing their rhythm as Kyungsoo gives him his full attention. “He’d found his soulmate when he was a kid and they were best friends, but he wasn’t like Yixing. He told me that he worried no one would want to date someone who had another person’s name, and that I was first in a long time to give him a chance.

“I never told him about my own situation because I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to one-up his problems, you know? I mean, Jaejoong was great, but I think that’s what caused the downfall of our relationship. He never gave me a reason to, but I felt like I _couldn’t_ tell him, and it exhausted me so much that I was running myself into the ground. He and his soulmate both have someone they’re really happy with now, so it all worked out but… I didn’t want the same thing to happen with you. That’s why I told Chanyeol not to say anything. I really really like you Kyungsoo. I didn’t want either of us to feel like we couldn’t share things like that with each other, so I’m glad we both got to say our piece.”

Minseok smiles down at Kyungsoo and presses a kiss to his forehead, sending pleasant tremors through Kyungsoo’s system as he squeezes him tight. “I’m glad we did too,” Kyungsoo whispers, and pulls Minseok down for a proper kiss. He waits for the mood to thin out again before crawling over Minseok’s body and resting his chin on the dip of Minseok’s chest, tapping his fingers one by one across Minseok’s sternum as he leers up at his boyfriend. “So,” he says darkly. “That Jaejoong wouldn’t happen to be the obnoxiously hot Jaejoong from the music department, would it?” he asks, desperately trying to suppress his grin as Minseok bursts into laughter beneath him.

“Yes, yes it would,” Minseok admits around a sheepish giggle, and Kyungsoo bites at his collarbone just to hear the sound again. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you know of him." 

“Jongdae can hardly shut up about him,” Kyungsoo scoffs. “He actually thought he had a chance until Jaejoong started dating Yunho.”

It’s Minseok’s turn to snort as he threads his fingers back into Kyungsoo’s hair and brushes his bangs off his forehead. “Yeah, right. Yoochun would have never approved of him anyway. Too damn loud,” he says, and Kyungsoo thinks he might have just fallen a little more in love.

 

“Finally got some, huh?” Jongin leers when they meet up for lunch the next day, a shit-eating grin solidly in place as Chanyeol jabs his fingers into Kyungsoo’s sides.

“What?” Kyungsoo mutters blearily as he nearly tips out of his seat. He has to swim through his muddled mind to find the correct meaning of Jongin’s words, but by the time he does, Chanyeol is already gaping at him and gasping loud enough for the couple two tables over to hear him.

“Oh my God he fucked your brains out,” Chanyeol deadpans, and had Kyungsoo not been so damn _tired_ he probably would have jumped across the table to throttle him.

Instead, he settles on blushing until his face nearly catches on fire and trying to bury it under nonchalance as he sips his black coffee. “I was actually pretty coherent until round three this morning,” Kyungsoo says, and his best friends shriek so loud all three of them are promptly kicked out of the restaurant.

 

Chanyeol gets Kyungsoo on his own a few days later, a rarity now that their significant others are such constant figures in their lives, and Kyungsoo reluctantly admits that he’s missed this: just the two of them hanging around doing whatever while simply taking in the other’s presence. Kyungsoo is idly flipping through a _very_ educational graphic novel of some sort while Chanyeol fiddles with the strings of his old guitar, something about needing more “ _umf_ ” in the song he’s been working on that can only be fixed by tuning the instrument up a key.

“Needs more zest,” Chanyeol had said, tongue poking out of his mouth at random intervals to taste the sound. “Less mushroom, more tangelo." 

Kyungsoo had rolled his eyes at the time, highly doubting that mushroom and tangelo should even _be_ in the same song, but as the older boy starts plucking out the notes and runs the tip of his tongue across the back of his teeth, Kyungsoo has to admit that it does sound better in the higher key; more tangelo was the trick after all.

Chanyeol goes through the song twice before speaking up again, minor tweaks ringing out on each run-through until Chanyeol hums with satisfaction and changes songs. “So tell me," he says offhandedly, “does Minseok know you’re a manga enthusiast or are you going to wait a while to cry about Prince of Tennis in front of him?”

Kyungsoo nearly breaks his neck turning to glare holes through his best friend’s skull. “ _That was one time_ ,” he spits as he raises his arm to sling said manga across the room. He tells himself that the only reason he resists is because the book is Jongin’s, and he would feel guilty for bending the younger boy’s pages on something as stupid as Chanyeol’s face.  

Chanyeol grins regardless. “Sure sure,” he says before his grin slides into something a little more subdued. “You guys did get to talk about other things though, right?” he asks vaguely, sneaking a glance up at Kyungsoo as the younger boy lowers his book back into a much safer position.

Kyungsoo hadn’t gone into detail about his conversation with Minseok when Jongin had been around, even after they were escorted out of the restaurant, preferring to keep it somewhat casual and more about the sex than the actual conversation. Although he knew Minseok considered Chanyeol a friend, Jongin was more of a loose acquaintance, and Kyungsoo wasn’t sure how much the younger knew- just because Kyungsoo trusted Jongin to the moon and back didn’t mean Minseok felt comfortable offering his most personal information to them.

Kyungsoo sighs and settles back into the couch. “Yeah,” Kyungsoo says on an exhale. “We did.”

The song Chanyeol switches to is one of Kyungsoo’s favorites- a bright little melody that tastes like honey butter and sweet potatoes that Chanyeol had written after his first date with Jongin. Kyungsoo isn’t sure what the title is, but he knows Chanyeol plays it often enough not to think about where his fingers are going on the frets. An airy smile dances on his lips as Chanyeol plays, and Kyungsoo tries to imagine the taste of honey butter on his tongue.

“Thanks for not saying anything,” Kyungsoo continues after Chanyeol gets through the second chorus. “I’m glad you let him tell me first.”

Chanyeol slows down his playing, plucking the notes one by one and letting them ring through the climax. “It wouldn’t have been right otherwise,” he says without skipping a beat. “I felt bad keeping things from you because you’re my best friend, but something like that isn’t mine to tell.” He goes back to the chorus again, floating through it one final time before strumming a chord in a slightly different key and sliding into the next song- one of Yixing’s compositions if Kyungsoo remembers correctly.

“I only found out by accident,” Chanyeol says, playing through the bridge on autopilot and nodding his head along to the beat. “I’d seen him drop by to visit Yixing a few times, but I just figured he might have been one of Yixing’s buyers. Which is whatever; he only ever sells anything to a couple of people here and there, but he came by in really bad shape one day. I thought it was a little weird that he kept himself so covered up all the time and usually smoked right here, but he came by a few months ago practically in tears and threw everything off almost as soon as he came in. Yixing wasn’t home yet and he was in so much pain I just gave him some of mine. It… I think that’s the only time I’ve ever seen him get high from it, and he told me everything. I wanted to make sure he was okay so I didn’t smoke any, but he was pretty far gone. After he met you at the river… He was so scared of telling you. He figured we were close and asked me if he really had a shot if he did, but… I don’t know. I guess he trusted my judgment because I’ve known you for so long, but he was still terrified. It hasn’t gone very well for him a few times before.”

“He didn’t give me specifics but, yeah, he told me about that,” Kyungsoo cuts in. They’d talked about a lot that night and even more over breakfast the next morning (once Kyungsoo could think straight again)- some good, some bad, and some of each from both of them, but it’s not anything Kyungsoo wants to go into detail with again.

Thankfully Chanyeol nods in understanding and leaves the subject alone. Instead, he shifts his grip to do an impromptu solo on the higher strings and eases into the next question. “Do you think you’ll be soulmates?” he asks a little more quietly, and Kyungsoo shrugs.

“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo admits softly. “Probably not.”

Chanyeol’s fingers trip across the guitar strings with an ugly clang that echoes through the apartment until Chanyeol slaps his hand over the frets to silence them with hasty apologies.

“What?” Kyungsoo snaps, more surprised than angry, and Chanyeol does everything to avoid his gaze.

“Sorry! I just- my hand slipped,” Chanyeol mutters, hastily rubbing over the strings as if to wipe away the mistake and squirming in his seat. He stares down at his guitar with furrowed eyebrows and tightly pressed lips, fingers hovering above the frets like he’s not sure what to play next. “Do you love him?” he asks, and a heavy silence falls over them.

Warmth flushes from Kyungsoo’s cheeks all the way down to his toes, and part of him just wants to pull the neck of his hoodie up and hide. He’d never really thought about it in black and white before- always preferring to let his feelings be what they were instead of trying to put names to them when it came to other people. Neither of them had said “I love you” yet, but… well… now that the question is staring him in the face, he _has_ to think about it, and as soon as he does, he already knows his answer.

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo breathes out, blush spreading and darkening as he refuses to look in his best friend’s general direction. He shifts anxiously on the couch and sits on the back of his hands; no matter which way he spins it, he definitely feels _something_ that has a smile threatening at his lips and a warmth flooding through his chest. “I think so.”

Chanyeol still isn’t playing. “Then… why...” he trails off, but Kyungsoo doesn’t need Chanyeol to finish the question to know exactly what he’s asking. The silence makes Kyungsoo squirm now too, his book long forgotten on the couch as he pulls his knees up to his chest and holds them tight.

“I mean, if it didn’t happen after the other night, it’s probably not going to,” he muses. “Can’t get much heavier than that.”

Chanyeol stares at his hands for a long time, eyebrows pinched together as he turns Kyungsoo’s words over and over again in his head. “And you’re… okay with that?” he finally asks, overly nonchalant as he starts playing again and drags through the song, plucking each note one by one as if they’re not allowed to touch.

And Kyungsoo knows what Chanyeol is looking for- knows why he’s asking- but when Kyungsoo searches his own mind, he can’t find the same reservations he knows Chanyeol can’t quite seem to let go. Instead, he sees Yixing and Song Qian, Jaejoong and Yoochun- so many others who have found happiness in someone other than their soulmates, and even though it’s not ideal, even though it’s not necessarily something Kyungsoo wants or even likes to think about, with Minseok he thinks it might be okay. _They_ might be okay.

He takes a deep breath, answers on the exhale. “Yeah,” Kyungsoo breathes out, a little more resolutely this time as he pulls his hands free and settles them in his lap. “We talked about that a little bit too and… I mean I’ll be glad if it happens, but if it doesn’t, I think it’d be alright.”

Chanyeol still doesn’t meet his eyes, his gaze somewhere far off and unattainable as he plucks through his song and gradually smoothes it out. He’s still a bit distant when he packs up to leave a few hours later, but squishes Kyungsoo into his chest all the same, grinning brightly as he walks backwards through the door and tells Kyungsoo to always remember to use protection while shooting fingerbullets at his best friend’s head.

Kyungsoo rolls his eyes and shoves him out the door, threatening him with bodily violence as Chanyeol makes lewd gestures all the way down the sidewalk.

 

Despite the initial hiccups, he and Minseok do make a solid run of their relationship. For a year and a half they learn and love and fight and make up, but time eventually gets in their way. Academics soon take priority over romantic endeavors, and as they both come to the end of their degrees, fate pulls them in different directions. They agree to go their separate ways when Minseok returns to Korea to finish his Ph.D.- Minseok is forced to part with the United States, and Kyungsoo refuses to leave. They split on amicable terms, but that doesn’t stop Kyungsoo from spending many a night face down on Chanyeol’s couch wondering if he’s made a terrible mistake. Chanyeol pets his hair through it all and tells his best friend to trust himself.

“You made this decision for a reason Kyungsoo,” he says, uncharacteristically stoic as he strums out the notes of his latest composition. “You wouldn’t have done it if you didn’t think it was for the best.” Kyungsoo still bemoans it for weeks, fingers itching to type out that he’s sorry and that he doesn’t want to let Minseok go, but somehow he holds it together.

They still keep in touch the best they can though; no matter how much it hurts, they’d gotten too close and had valued each other way too much to let their friendship go just like that. They exchange texts and Skype when they get the chance, remaining close friends until the wounds fade from a dull ache to a soothing hum every time Kyungsoo sees Minseok’s gummy smile through his pixelated computer screen. Even after Minseok graduates and he tries the dating game again, the pangs of jealousy aren’t as bad as Kyungsoo expects them to be. Eventually- after long long months of pep talks and cheesy nachos on Chanyeol’s shitty old couch- they stop coming all together.

And years later when they’ve both settled into something nice and warm and comfortable, Kyungsoo is the first person Minseok sends the photo of him and his newfound soulmate to. Minseok’s eyes in the photo are red-rimmed and full of tears as a pretty boy presses into one side of his face and their bare forearms are held up against the other. The name on Minseok’s wrist is blurry and distorted at best, but reads “Shim Changmin” just as definitively as the other boy’s says “Kim Minseok”.

\--

College graduation sneaks up on Kyungsoo much faster than he expects it to. Before he even blinks his eyes, he’s already submitting his senior honors thesis and picking up his cap and gown. He leaves the student union in a daze, cheap black fabric draped over his arm and tassel jingling softly from the hat clutched tightly in his hands. His next stop is graduate school, his acceptance letter already sitting on his desk with cheeto dust staining the corners, but he feels like he just _doesn’t know what’s next._ It’s like he’s floating through the motions of graduation prep as the world spins on without a care for his inner turmoil.

He’d invited his mother to the ceremony purely on principle, but secretly reserved the second ticket for Jongin instead- Chanyeol getting the first one was so much of a given he’d forwarded the ticket delivery to the older boy’s address to begin with. Unsurprisingly, Kyungsoo’s mother can’t find the time off work to fly halfway across the world, and Jongin readily accepts the invitation with a broad grin and an enthusiastic “hell _yeah_ I want to see you bust your ass tripping down those stairs!” Kyungsoo had promptly punched him in the arm, but he can’t even pretend he’s not relieved to have Jongin there.

He’s nervous. Kyungsoo isn’t really sure why anxiety twists in his gut when he drapes a rainbow of chords around his neck and zips up the last few inches of his robe, but it doesn’t leave even after spotting Chanyeol’s ridiculous sign frantically waving among the sea of people, a giddy and smiling Jongin right beside him supporting one of the flapping corners. Kyungsoo grips his pronunciation card a little tighter, his fingers careful not to smear the _‘k-yuh-ng-SOO dō’_ written in neat black ink right below an ugly printed _Kyunghee Do_ , and waits for his row to queue up at the side of the stage. If he’s honest with himself, Kyungsoo doesn’t really remember much after that.

His name is called and he walks through the arc of spotlights hanging above him, but it’s all a blur. He doesn’t know what face he made for his picture or what the dean had said when he shook his hand- all Kyungsoo hears is Chanyeol’s voice, loud and clear over the roar of applause, screaming “DO KYUNGSOO SARANGHAE!!” with Jongin’s light trill harmonizing in the background.

After the ceremony Chanyeol snatches him up in a vice grip and spins him around until the Kyungsoo shrieks to be put down immediately, black robe fluttering behind him and cap flying off his head and into Jongin’s waiting hands. He babbles a slew of Korean into Kyungsoo’s ear about how proud he is before letting the younger boy down, and once he’s free, Jongin promptly takes Chanyeol’s place. The hug is much less bone-crushing and involves a lot less shaking, but Jongin is just as ecstatic.

“I have no clue what Chanyeol just said, but if it was good things, same!” he cries as he flings his arms around Kyungsoo’s narrow shoulders and squeezes tight. “You didn’t even trip!”

Kyungsoo snorts but returns the hug all the same. “Unlike your boyfriend, I actually have control of my limbs thank you,” he grumbles, earning him a low whine and a broad grin. 

“That’s the real reason I got my GED,” Chanyeol stage-whispers. “Didn’t want to risk tripping at graduation.” It’s clearly a joke, but Kyungsoo wouldn’t put it past him.

 

“I really am proud of you,” Chanyeol repeats later that night, slipping back into Korean as Jongin dozes off against his side. Kyungsoo is on the other end of the couch, well on his way towards sleep as well with Jongin’s legs pillowed in his lap, the younger boy’s feet twitching every so often from his dreams as Kyungsoo absently strokes his smoothly shaven calves.

Chanyeol’s smile is fond as he stares at Jongin’s sleeping face, and Kyungsoo feels a jolt of _something_ shooting through his chest. The blond doesn’t even look up from his boyishfriend, but his words are for Kyungsoo alone. “I’ve always known you’d do great things,” he says. “So much more than I ever will.”

Kyungsoo scoffs, but there’s no bite to it. “Don’t be so dramatic,” he mutters, but Chanyeol shakes his head.

“No I’m serious,” he shoots back. “You’ve always pushed through all the junk people have thrown in your way and you’ve never let it stop you from anything. You’re going to get your _master’s_ degree in applied physical chemistry- I don’t even know what that _is._ You’re probably going to win a Nobel prize or something by the time you’re thirty.”

Kyungsoo really does scoff this time. “Now you’re just reaching. Seriously…”

“I mean it!” Chanyeol protests. Jongin mumbles incoherently at the outburst, and Chanyeol lulls him back to sleep with a gentle kiss to his forehead. “I’m serious Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol repeats, much quieter now as Jongin snuffles and buries his face deeper in the older boy’s neck. “You’re capable of anything.”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo snorts, “everything except getting a soulmate. If Minseok wasn’t it, I don’t know how the hell I could possibly get anyone else.” It’s meant as somewhat of a joke, something to dispel the cheesiness stinking up the room (that may have just been Jongin’s feet), but as soon as it’s out of his mouth, something heavy falls over them and Kyungsoo wonders why he ever thought it was a good idea.

Chanyeol’s face darkens as he stares at the muted television in front of them. Its flashing light casts shadows across his best friend’s face and Kyungsoo isn’t sure how to read them. “Anyone would be lucky to have you Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol says after a long pause. “Not having someone yet isn’t a reflection of you at all. Whoever it is just… needs to get their shit together and realize how amazing you are before they can deserve you.”

His tone is too serious for Kyungsoo to laugh it off like he wants to- just giggle away the heaviness pushing down on him and making the collar of his tee-shirt feel entirely too tight around his neck. Kyungsoo’s wrists start to itch, and he genuinely regrets saying anything at all as they sit in silence. The television flickers on and Jongin moves between them, a perfect harmony to the fluttering of Kyungsoo’s heart and the dull buzzing invading his mind. 

“You’ll find them,” Chanyeol mutters, voice so low that Kyungsoo isn’t sure the reassurance is for him at all. 

\--

Despite being a part of a world renown dance company, Jongin isn’t much one for travelling with their shows- that is, until the company is in desperate need of a replacement for their male lead in Swan Lake five days before the flight leaves for Florida to perform it. It’s no secret that Swan Lake is Jongin’s favorite ballet and that he knows practically the entire thing backwards, forwards, and for three different parts- especially the male lead. It’s not perfect, but he’s physically capable and better versed in the routine than any of their other male dancers, so in no time Jongin is packing his bags and waving goodbye to Chanyeol and Kyungsoo in the airport with promises to call as soon as he lands.

 

Offers pour in from around the country as soon as he comes home, and Chanyeol hugs him so tight he can barely breathe in between Chanyeol’s professions of love and desperate kisses. Kyungsoo isn’t far behind with a rare hug of his own, and Jongin is nearly vibrating with excitement. He decides to stay with his company for another year out of loyalty, but takes on a lot more traveling roles as his popularity rises. Chanyeol even brings Kyungsoo along to see him dance in Denver one weekend as a surprise, and Jongin gets so emotional that he nearly ruins his costume with a rainbow of dripping makeup. The way he smiles at Chanyeol that night makes Kyungsoo believe in love all over again.

He makes an effort to call as often as he can when he’s away- sometimes just to Chanyeol, sometimes just Kyungsoo, but often both of them together. He tells them about everything from his travels to the itchy sequins on his costumes, and even consults them before dying his hair a glowing platinum blond in Seattle.

 

All in all, things go extremely well. They don’t think anything of it when Jongin starts wearing long sleeves for every Skype call during his trip to New York, but by the time he returns home, there’s no point in denying the reason.

There’s a pretty blue ribbon tying up Jongin’s hair and exhaustion painting their droopy eyes when Chanyeol goes to pick them up from the airport. Kyungsoo isn’t too far behind as Chanyeol races forward and sweeps Jongin into his arms, holding tight and desperate after three long months of only video chatting in between rehearsals. Chanyeol is none the wiser, but Kyungsoo sees it as though it had smacked him square in the face. There, standing out on Jongin’s uncovered wrist and written in a brilliant red, is a name, shining bright and beautiful just like the marquee that had displayed the dancer’s name in Time Square for the past three months: Taemin Lee.

Kyungsoo doesn’t have the heart to say anything about it; in the end he doesn’t need to anyway. As soon as Jongin manages to extract themselves from Chanyeol’s hold, it’s plain to see how strained their smile is- how much apprehension is swimming in their eyes. The regret. The fear.

“Chanyeol… I have to tell you something...”

 

The ride back to Kyungsoo’s flat is very quiet. Chanyeol drops Kyungsoo off first and talks to Jongin alone well into the night, only coming back to Kyungsoo’s apartment at some odd hour of the morning to fall face-first into his couch in a heap of conflicted misery. Kyungsoo expects tears and snot and gross sobbing, but for hours, there is nothing but silence.

Kyungsoo remembers, quite distinctively, how Chanyeol’s first breakup went. He had just finished up his reading homework for the week like a good middle schooler and was ready to get some sleep when Chanyeol came barreling through his window with Baekhyun clasped in a vice grip between his fingers. Kyungsoo took sympathy on the poor animal before his friend and pried Baekhyun from Chanyeol's hands. When he did finally look up at Chanyeol’s face, it had been plain to see that the he’d been crying at least as long as Kyungsoo had been doing his homework, and that it probably wasn’t going to stop any time soon. Baekhyun gratefully burrowed into Kyungsoo’s shirt as soon as he was free, and Chanyeol snorted a river of snot back into his nose, haphazardly wiping whatever was left of it off with the sleeve of his already wet jacket. Kyungsoo had cringed and made a mental note to never borrow that one again.

“She broke up with me,” had been the only thing Chanyeol managed to say. More snot and tears streamed down his blotchy face, but this time he didn’t bother wiping it. Instead, he hiccupped like he was running out of breath and flung himself into Kyungsoo’s much smaller body. Wet, gooey sleeves wrapped around Kyungsoo’s head, squishing him against Chanyeol’s chest, and Kyungsoo had to fight to keep from screaming in abject horror. (Baekhyun does it for him as he gets crushed between the two boys, but it’s not the same.) Kyungsoo had tried to worm his arms out before Baekhyun suffocated, but only managed to get one arm free as Chanyeol pressed them even closer together and rubbed his disgusting face into Kyungsoo’s hair. “My life is _over_ Kyung!” he’d wailed. “Over! Sandara was my soulmate and now I’m going to die _aloooooohohoooone_!”

Kyungsoo had patted him as sympathetically as he could with his free hand, Baekhyun squeaking in time with every hit as he tried to wriggle away, and cringed. He felt a goo blob somewhere in Baekhyun’s fur and thought that maybe the little guy understood his pain after all. “Um, there there?” he’d comforted. Chanyeol only sobbed harder.

“No you don’t _understand_! We were supposed to get married and be together forever and now I’m stuck with BAEKHYUN!” Said Baekhyun had finally managed to break out of Kyungsoo’s hand and scampered as quickly as he could across the floor. Chanyeol crumpled. “Oh GOD I’m _HOPELESS_!” he’d shrieked, and Kyungsoo braced himself for a very long night.

His subsequent breakups aren’t all that different from the first- slightly less dramatic once they get past their awkward teenage years, sure, but there’s always plenty of gross sobbing and clinging and binge eating whatever junk food is on hand. That’s exactly what has Kyungsoo so concerned with the thick silence hovering between them with this one. Even his offer of bacon and cheese covered nachos had been answered with a mere shake of Chanyeol’s head. It leaves Kyungsoo at a loss of words himself, so he opts to gingerly take his place at the end of the couch, mindful of the blond curls splayed across the leather cushions in every direction and bites his lip. Up close, he can see the slight pinch in Chanyeol’s brow and the cloudiness of his dark eyes. It’s a look Kyungsoo has only seen once before, and it’s not one that he likes.

He waits for Chanyeol to say something first- anything- but the older boy remains silent. Chanyeol has always had a way with words, and now that they aren’t coming, Kyungsoo doesn’t quite know what to do. He absentmindedly strokes his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair the way he knows the other likes but Kyungsoo rarely indulges him in, and waits.

And waits and waits and waits until almost an hour later when Chanyeol finally finds the strength to speak.

“Jongin said they were willing to try if I was,” Chanyeol mutters, his voice hollow as he stares at nothing. “I said no.”

Kyungsoo hums and threads his fingers through Chanyeol’s bangs, combing them away from his forehead as he waits for the other to continue.

Chanyeol shifts to lie on his side and leans into Kyungsoo’s touch, sucking in a deep breath and letting it out slow. “They didn’t sleep with Taemin or anything, but… the way they talked about him Kyungsoo I just- I can’t. Taemin is a world famous dancer for God’s sake. There’s no way I can compete with that. And I… Yixing is happy with his soulmate the way they are, and I _know_ it’s a thing and happens all the time but I- I _want_ to be in love with my soulmate Kyungsoo.” His voice cracks on his best friend’s name and his eyes go wild as they desperately search the couch cushions for something they both know isn’t there. “Is that too selfish?”

“No,” Kyungsoo answers immediately. So many people in his life are driven by selfish ambition and desires, lacing it into everything that they do no matter the cost to anyone else. Chanyeol, of all people, is not one of them. He wants to believe it truly isn’t a selfish answer, more for his own sake than Chanyeol’s (ah, but is that not selfish in and of itself?), but realistically, he just doesn’t know. _Is_ it asking for too much? To want the one person you care about more than anything else to want you and you alone? Of course Yixing is happy with what he has with Song Qian- he’d stood beside her at her wedding just last spring and cried harder than her mother, but he- well, now that Kyungsoo thinks about it, he’s never seen or heard about Yixing dating… anyone really. Never spoken about an ex or dreamed about a crush. The love songs he writes are never quite romantic- beautiful, yes, but always about finding happiness with a vague someone that could be for any reason at all.

Chanyeol’s songs, however, are nothing like that. Kyungsoo knows from many a night spent lounging in a cloud of bitter smoke on Chanyeol’s couch that the older boy’s songs positively _bleed_ of longing and heartbreak, passion and romance and everything in between. Sometimes they’re vague, sometimes they’re specific enough that Kyungsoo knows exactly which girl the cute freckles belong to and all the different ways she’d made Chanyeol’s heart sing with joy or devastation.

The worst ones always inspired the most enchanting melodies, good or bad- the songs about Jongin especially so. It's a bit cruel, Kyungsoo thinks, that the next song Chanyeol writes will probably be the most beautiful of them all.

Chanyeol looks up at his best friend as Kyungsoo muses, a slow, almost pitiful gesture that seems to sap the last of the energy out of him. More than sad, Kyungsoo thinks he just looks utterly _lost_.

“I really thought it would be Jongin,” Chanyeol says, his voice hollow. Broken.

Kyungsoo can only stare back and offer a sad curl of his lips. “Yeah…” he answers softly. “I did too.”

\--

Kyungsoo honestly does try to stay in touch with Jongin as much as he can once the younger moves to New York more permanently, but awkwardness and busy schedules make it much more effort than either of them have the energy for. The phone calls are stilted and scattered around classes and rehearsals, their length getting shorter and the time between them growing longer.

“I really hope Chanyeol finds someone good,” Jongin says one night after a long bout of silence. “He deserves that. I just… wish it had been me.”

Rather than agree with them, Kyungsoo sucks in a deep breath and holds it. They had been tiptoeing around the subject of Chanyeol for a while now, dancing over the broken pieces left behind that none of them could quite pick up without getting cut.

“Do you love him?” Kyungsoo finally asks. “Taemin?” He’s never asked about Jongin’s soulmate outright before, but he has to know- has to hear it for himself- like maybe if Chanyeol had been wrong about this whole thing, everything could go back to the way it was.

Jongin is silent for a moment before they answer, their voice soft and fragile like it’s the last thing they want to say. “Yeah,” Jongin admits on a breathy, humorless laugh. “I really do. I loved Chanyeol but… being with your soulmate is… it’s different. I can’t even explain it Kyungsoo. It’s just something else entirely.”

Before they can say any more, Kyungsoo fakes a call from another friend and quickly hangs up. His heart thuds violently in his chest and his ears ring too loud for him to think straight.

It’s the last time he hears Jongin’s voice for many, many years.

 

They still text each other on their birthdays for a while, but eventually that too fades to nothing. Jongin stops asking about how Chanyeol is doing; Chanyeol never asked to begin with.

In the weeks (months) following the breakup, Kyungsoo stays at his best friend’s apartment almost as much as he’s at his own. He doesn’t complain about the smoke as much and even indulges himself in a hit or two when his exams get to be a little overwhelming. In general, he tries to get Chanyeol’s life back on track to normalcy the best he can, but Kyungsoo knows that there isn’t much he can do; Chanyeol is going to cope however Chanyeol’s going to cope, and no amount of cheese puffs or late night movie marathons is going to change that.

Kyungsoo had been right about the music though. Absolutely _heart-wrenching_ melodies flow from the strings of Chanyeol’s guitar and pour out into the apartment on a nightly basis, and Kyungsoo sits in awe every time he hears a note. Even Yixing pauses his own compositions to watch Chanyeol with glassy eyes and a lump in his throat some days. They make more money on their gigs in a week than they used to in a month, and Chanyeol is even approached to sell some of his songs to a minor record label, but the older boy doesn’t even seem to notice. He doesn’t seem notice a lot of things for a very long time.

 

Even when Chanyeol returns to normal, it’s never quite the same. Almost two years have passed, and even though Chanyeol is back to being his loud, obtrusive self, Kyungsoo can tell that there’s still something off. When the music is drowning out the world and the focus is on someone other than him, Kyungsoo can see the way Chanyeol’s smile slips into something little more jaded and the way he stares wistfully at couples with matching red names adorning their wrists. Kyungsoo hasn’t seen Chanyeol so much as glance at his own since Jongin left.

More and more of their friends find their soulmates every day, and it gets hard even for Kyungsoo not to feel a bit bitter when he sees blank space staring back at him the days he bothers to check. He used to tease his best friend for peeking at his wrists so eagerly back in high school, but now he would give anything to see Chanyeol show even a glimmer of interest. He wears long sleeved shirts well into summertime when everyone else is sweating buckets, and as far as Kyungsoo can tell, he doesn’t even bother with the idea of dating again.

He catches Chanyeol in a particularly good mood one night and almost doesn’t want to ruin it with silly questions and painful memories, but he can’t think of a better time to ask; no matter what mood Chanyeol starts in, it’s never going to end pleasantly.

They’re at Chanyeol’s newer, slightly less shitty apartment blowing smoke rings at the ceiling while Chanyeol strums away at his old acoustic guitar and Kyungsoo tries to recognize the tune. It’s not one of his own, or at least not one that Kyungsoo has heard him play before, but Chanyeol plucks every note like a promise, deft fingers peaking out from the sleeves of his sweater as he goes, and Kyungsoo is fascinated just watching the strings vibrate. He doesn’t want to tear open old wounds right now, but he has to- he’ll lose the chance if he doesn’t.

“Hey, Chanyeol,” he rasps after a particularly long drag, slowly letting the smoke curl away from his lips and fade into the air above him. “Can I ask you something?”

The older boy hums, fingers not pausing their melodic rhythm, and Kyungsoo almost backs out. It’s a beautiful song.

“You haven’t dated anyone since Jongin, have you?” he asks anyway, straight to the point. Chanyeol keeps playing.

“No. You’d be the first to know if I did.”

Kyungsoo had figured as much. He takes a deep, smoke-free breath and watches Chanyeol’s fingers dance across the strings, his droopy eyelids staring at the ceiling he as reconstructs the song from memory. It’s an upbeat little tune, something that Chanyeol doesn’t play often anymore, and Kyungsoo really _really_ doesn’t want to ruin it but-

“You haven’t checked your wrist in a long time either.”

There. Done.

Chanyeol’s fingers pause over the strings and tighten against the neck of his guitar, his knuckles turning white for a minute before they leave the frets completely. “Yeah,” he says shortly. Nothing more. He leans toward the coffee table almost in slow motion, Kyungsoo watching him intently as he reaches for the last stub of their joint in the ashtray and takes a long drag. The end burns bright and orange for a moment, the stark white paper falling away to ash little by little until Chanyeol releases and snubs it out in its own remains. He doesn’t resume playing, merely stares at the tiny tendril of smoke rising from the ashes and blows it out of his lungs in a long, even stream.

“Remember what I said when we were kids? About Baekhyun being my soulmate?” he says after a long pause, jerking Kyungsoo from the gentle lull he’d let himself fall into.

“Yeah?” Kyungsoo answers slowly, turning the words over in his brain to make sure he understands them through his haze. “You were convinced that you were fated to a ferret. Kinda hard to forget that.”

Chanyeol says nothing as he turns his arms over, wrists up, and rolls back his sleeve. His thumb absently strokes the unmarked skin beneath it, and his lips curl into a slow, self-depreciating smile. “I think I might have been on to something,” he says. “Maybe I don’t have a soulmate.”

Kyungsoo goes rigid and jerks his head to stare at his best friend with wide eyes. “Don’t say that,” he snaps.

Chanyeol doesn’t even flinch at the outburst, just returns his hands to the neck of his guitar and starts playing right where he left off. The tune is the same, but Kyungsoo can’t help noticing the minor notes that work their way into the song, an air of melancholy slipping its way through the cracks and curling around Chanyeol’s fingers like a desperate plea. He doesn’t want it to be true. Chanyeol is… _Chanyeol_. He can’t not have a soulmate. No one goes their entire life without a soulmate… right?

Almost as if he could hear Kyungsoo’s thoughts, Chanyeol lifts one shoulder in a half-assed shrug and plays on. Never has Kyungsoo wanted their blunt to last longer than he does now- anything to occupy his mouth and give him an excuse for not saying more. He takes a deep breath instead, distracting himself with the way the air from his lungs cuts through the lingering haze and sends it into smooth, chaotic spirals.

“You’ll find them,” he says softly, melting back into the couch cushions as music and smoke dance around his head. “If I have one, you’ll have one.”

 

It’s not until many, many years later that Chanyeol reconsiders his theory again. He’s sitting alone in his bedroom, guitar once again nestled in his arms as he stares at nothing. His thoughts float around in his hazy mind and whisper, ever so gently, that maybe there is someone out there- someone who’s waited just as long and desperately as him. Another voice, one much much quieter, whispers that what’s meant to be will be; maybe there _isn’t_ someone out there for him, but trying to fit square pieces into round holes will only leave them both battered and raw the more he tries to force it. The voice croons that maybe- just _maybe-_ the round piece _is_ out there somewhere, but maybe… maybe it isn’t, and that it’s okay. Just because fate he doesn’t have a name on his wrist doesn’t mean that he can’t love just as fiercely or be loved in return. 

The same voice whispers, day after day, and becomes stronger. _It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay,_ it says, the sound of it tasting like peppermint and radishes as it floats through his mind. And one day, lying on the couch with Kyungsoo’s head pillowed in his lap as the younger makes fun of his obnoxiously loud voice… Chanyeol believes.

\--

It’s a brisk day in the middle of October when Kyungsoo gets Pulled to a park on the outskirts of the university. He sits on a shitty stone bench for hours and waits, hopes, _prays_ that his soulmate won’t be revolted by the person they find- won’t have the wrong name written on their wrist- won’t reject the person they see when he doesn’t match up to their expectation. The sun slips lower in the sky and a chill tinges the air, but Kyungsoo stays put, sipping his now cold peppermint mocha and waiting for his soulmate to arrive, only to look up and find that he had been with him the whole time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick link to the sequel/prequel [Edges](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7905001) please please please go read it if you haven't yet! it is an extension of the last paragraph and closes up all the loose ends it leaves ~~and read it again even if you already have ;;;~~
> 
>  
> 
> i'm sorry this took so long to post... i had a huge relapse of self-consciousness about the fic and was extremely anxious about posting it because i didn't think it would be good enough. this whole fic has been a wild ride and it means so much to me in so many ways. thank you all for your comments and kudos and sharing on your tumblrs and everything else. it means more than i can put into words that this fic was so well received. i know the end is always sad, but fear not, i'm done with this au yet ;) 
> 
> also! please please please send love to [syenya](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Syenya) because there is not a speck of exaggeration when i say that this fic would never have been posted without them- especially not this chapter. they have been my support throughout the entire process, and i can't even begin to thank them enough. 
> 
> yenyen, thank you.
> 
>  
> 
> also also, moral of minseok's story: always use a boiling chip/stick when using new glassware and for the love of God do NOT throw water on acid burns. lab safety first kiddies


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